Chongqing Rural Commercial Bank Co (重慶農村商銀) shares fell on the first day of trading in Hong Kong after the company raised HK$11.5 billion (US$1.48 billion) in the territory’s fifth-largest initial public offering (IPO) this year.
The shares reversed earlier gains, declining 3.2 percent to HK$5.08 at the morning close after advancing by as much as 4.6 percent from the IPO price of HK$5.25.
“Chongqing’s non-performing loan ratio is higher than other listed Chinese banks and that’s a concern to investors,” said Louis Wong, a director at Phillip Securities HK Ltd.
Its ratio of non-performing assets stood at 2.99 percent as of June 30, the highest among its publicly traded peers.
The bank braved an 8 percent drop in the benchmark Hang Seng Index from a Nov. 8 peak that forced companies including Huaneng Renewables Corp (華能新能源) to cancel or delay IPOs.
The Chinese government stepped up measures over the past two months to drain liquidity and contain inflation, saying on Dec. 3 the country would shift to a “prudent” monetary policy next year from a “moderately loose” stance.
Huaneng Renewables, a unit of China’s biggest electricity producer, scrapped its first-time share sale on Monday because of unexpected and excessive market volatility. The company was seeking as much as US$1.3 billion.
Chongqing Bank is the first Chinese lender since Agricultural Bank of China Ltd (中國農民銀行) to go public in Hong Kong. It’s the ninth and smallest Chinese bank to list in the city.
“Some investors could have switched their investment to Agricultural Bank of China from Chongqing Bank,” said Linus Yip, chief strategist at First Shanghai Securities Ltd in Hong Kong. “Once the share price falls below the IPO price, it will take three to four days to ease the technical selling pressure.”
Agricultural Bank climbed 2 percent to HK$4.09 at the lunch break in Hong Kong.
Fubon Life Insurance Co (富邦人壽), Chow Tai Fook Nominee Ltd, Nexus Capital Investing Ltd and Value Partners Ltd are among institutional investors that bought stock in the Chongqing Bank IPO.
Chongqing Bank was established in June 2008 after the government merged rural cooperatives in the region. Based in Chongqing, China’s most populous city, it had 62,000 corporate and 17.5 million retail customers, according to the prospectus.
Chongqing’s economic growth averaged 18.2 percent on a nominal basis over the past three years, compared with the national rate of 13.2 percent, according to government figures cited in the prospectus.
The bank, with 1,763 outlets in Chongqing, had 262 billion yuan (US$39 billion) of assets as of June 30. It forecasts profit of at least 2.85 billion yuan this year, an increase of 51 percent from last year.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained