Chinese IPO Guide
China is rapidly becoming a powerhouse for IPOs, and is now the world's second-biggest market after raising over $24billion in 2005. After a strong start to 2006 – with $9.7billion being generated by the Bank of China IPO alone - a further raft of offerings are expected to generate a record $30billion before the end of the year.
Following on from our successful series of Russian IPO conferences, Europa Events therefore have pleasure in announcing a one-day conference to be held in London to examine the rapid rise of Chinese IPOs and the opportunities they provide for investors and IPO-related industries worldwide.
With IPO case-study presentations as well as speeches from the international stock exchanges, regulators, financiers and lawyers, this conference will provide a comprehensive guide to Chinese IPOs and investment in them.
Shares of Soho China, a Beijing property developer, soared 15 percent Monday on their first day of trading in Hong Kong - the latest hot public stock offering that is creating a new class of Chinese real estate tycoons.
The spectacular debut of Soho, which values the company at $6 billion, comes at a time when stock prices in China are skyrocketing and some of the country's biggest cities are being radically transformed by a huge building boom.
Despite government efforts to curb real estate speculation in China, housing prices continue to rise, fueling even more construction, and also a frenzy of initial public stock offerings by big real estate companies.
Indeed, over the past few years, the IPO boom has already made some individuals worth billions of dollars.
While the United States is in the grips of a subprime mortgage crisis, investors in Chinese real estate are celebrating and pushing the value of housing and housing shares to spectacular heights.
The public offering Monday raised nearly $1.7 billion for Soho China, or as much as Google raised in its 2004 initial stock offering in the United States.
The founders of Soho, Pan Shiyi and Zhang Xin, a husband-and-wife team known for their stylish Beijing developments, are now worth close to $4 billion on paper, based on the closing price Monday.
A Chinese real estate developer named Country Garden raised $1.9 billion in a Hong Kong stock offering this year.
The largest shareholder in Country Garden is the founder's 26-year-old daughter, Yang Huiyan. She is now believed to be the richest person in China, with shares valued at about $16 billion.
Last year, the richest individual in China, according to Forbes, was Wong Kwong Yu, a retailing entrepreneur who was said to be worth $2.3 billion.
"This is sort of the best play in this market," said Michael Pettis, an associate professor of finance at Beijing University and a former investment banker. "In real estate you're getting overinflated profits from borrowing money to get cheap land and then selling at inflated prices; and then you've got a stock market that is valuing a dollar of earnings at about 40 or 50 times. So you've got a bubble on top of a bubble."
The rise of Soho China and its real estate peers is emblematic of this country's feverish economic growth, its hulking ambitions and its unprecedented construction boom, which is helping drive up the prices of commodities around the world.
With China rapidly urbanizing, millions of people are being relocated, sometimes against their will, to make way for sprawling new housing developments and so-called CBDs, or central business districts.
Many big projects, however, are veritable urban Levittowns, erected in helter-skelter fashion, sometimes with as many as 50 look-alike high-rises crowded onto a single plot of land.
"The scale of what's happening there is unimaginable," said Thomas Campanella, an assistant professor of city and regional planning at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and the author of the forthcoming book, "The Concrete Dragon," a portrait of China's spectacular rise.
"The greatest chapters of American urban development just pale in comparison to what is happening today in China," he said.
Property developers who were lucky enough to get hold of valuable land near major urban centers are now sitting on enormous fortunes.
When observers compile lists of the wealthiest individuals in China, the ranks are often well stocked with developers of real estate, like Xu Rongmao of Shimao, who is worth an estimated $6.7 billion, and Chen Zhuolin of Agile Properties, who is worth about $4.7 billion.
There have been warnings, of course, about a real estate downturn and the threats of a recent jump in inflation, which some analysts fear could slow the economy, particularly after Beijing holds the 2008 Olympics.
But in spite of the talk of housing bubbles, illegal land grabs and even corrupt developers, China remains in the throes of the real estate bonanza.
Global investment banks are among those cashing in.
Goldman Sachs and HSBC took Soho public. Merrill Lynch, UBS and Credit Suisse have played a role in big real estate offerings.
And Morgan Stanley has done more than most, helping raise $6 billion over the past three years by taking eight Chinese real estate companies public, including Shimao, Agile and Country Garden.
Most of the developers have seen their shares climb even higher after listing.
Shares of Shimao, for instance, are up 288 percent in just over a year; and Agile's stock has climbed nearly 400 percent in less than two years
If you would like to have further information on any of our services, please visit:
Shenzhen company registration、Shanghaicompany registration、beijing company registration 、guangzhou company registration、
yiwu company registration、quanzhou company registration.
Tannet——Global Corporate Solution Provider,Value Investment & Strategic Development.
