I was interviewed by Reuters and Bloomberg again to comment on the IPOs of China Galaxy Securities (US$1.1 billion) and Sinopec Engineering (expected to raise US$1.8 billion), which are indicative of a pick-up in IPO activity in Hong Kong.
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Successfully closing IPOs is challenging in these tricky markets. Hong Kong has had its fair share of new listings pulled, delayed or altogether indefinitely postponed over the last year or so. The Securities and Futures Commission’s response has been to turn the screws on new issue sponsors and, now, on auditors.
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HONG KONG (Dow Jones Investment Banker) – Claw-back rules for retail tranches in Hong Kong IPOs are a unique feature of that market. They bring an element of fairness between institutions and the general public; however, retail investors have increasingly shunned new issues and also now account for a smaller proportion of secondary trading, as compared with a few years ago. Now might perhaps be a good time to rethink those provisions, and to grant more flexibility to ECM bankers and issuers to allocate books of demand.
HONG KONG (Dow Jones Investment Banker) – Despite all the hype and the almost weekly announcements of planned billion-dollar deals, retail investors in Hong Kong have largely shunned IPOs since the start of the year.
I was interviewed live on 16 June on Bloomberg Television by London-based anchor Linzie Janis, on the trading debut for Samsonite, following its IPO in Hong Kong. I was separately interviewed for an article on the same subject, written by Bloomberg reporter Fox Hu, which also touched on prospects for the pricing of Prada’s IPO, also in Hong Kong.
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