China Railway Signal and Communication Corp (中國鐵路通信信號) is seeking to raise as much as US$1.8 billion from an initial public offering (IPO) in Hong Kong, in what would be the first major new listing in the territory since China’s recent stock market plunge.
The Beijing-based company, the world’s largest provider of train traffic-control systems, is selling 1.75 billion shares at HK$6.30 to HK$8 each, according to terms of the deal obtained by Bloomberg.
Sixteen cornerstone investors, including China Railway Group Ltd (中國中鐵) and Shanghai Zhenhua Heavy Industries Co (振華重工), have agreed to buy more than half of the offering.
Cornerstone investors typically agree to hold on to their shares for at least six months in return for guaranteed allocation.
China Railway Signal is seeking to become the first major new Hong Kong listing since a Chinese stock market rout wiped out US$4 trillion in value and triggered unprecedented government intervention to support equities.
The deal would add to the US$18.5 billion raised by first-time share sales in the territory this year, data compiled by Bloomberg showed.
The company’s offering comes amid a major Chinese push for rail development.
The government is seeking to use state-owned rail companies to win lucrative contracts and project political influence abroad, targeting markets such as Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia.
State-owned CSR Corp (中國南車) and China CNR Corp (中國北車) were combined in June to form CRRC Corp, a train equipment maker dwarfing Siemens AG and Alstom SA.
The merger aimed to create economies of scale to help China compete more aggressively for overseas rail deals.
In May, the Chinese government included rail as one of 10 focus industries in a blueprint to make China into one of the world’s most advanced industrialized economies.
China Railway Signal plans to price the offering on Friday and start trading on the following Friday, the terms showed.
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],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
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