China bank to raise €17.4bn in record IPO

Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) is set to raise €17

Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) is set to raise €17.4 billion in the world's largest IPO after it said today it would exercise a 15 per cent over-allotment option on the Shanghai stock exchange.

China's largest lender, which had raised a record $19 billion in the first simultaneous Hong Kong and Shanghai IPO, is expected to exercise the over-allotment option in Hong Kong after the Shanghai move, analysts said.

ICBC set the price of its Shanghai portion of the IPO at 3.12 yuan per share and the Hong Kong offer at 3.07 Hong Kong dollars each, at the top end of its indicated price range, it said in a statement issued today.

The Shanghai over-allotment means the bank will raise a record 46.644 billion yuan (€4.7 billion) in its Shanghai A-share issue, according to calculations, easily surpassing the current domestic record of 20 billion yuan held by Bank of China's Shanghai IPO listed in July.

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A similar move would bring its Hong Kong offer to 40.7 billion H-shares, raising 125 billion Hong Kong dollars, bringing the total funds raised through the IPO to €17.4 billion.

That would surpass Japan's NTT Mobile Communications, which raised €14.6 billion in 1998, as the world's largest.