BOC gets approval for $60b HK listing | SCMP
The Bank of China (BOC) has secured key approval from the State Council to launch a $60 billion Hong Kong initial public offering in the first half of this year, sources close to the situation have revealed.
The cabinet approval, secured last week, is a blow to domestic opponents of the listing plan who had sought to delay the H-share offering of China's second-largest lender by assets, pending a simultaneous domestic A-share offering.
Objection to BOC's Hong Kong IPO comes against the backdrop of an intense debate on whether foreign institutions are profiting disproportionately from the privatisation of the country's largest banks by taking significant stakes before the share sales are completed.
......BOC may file a preliminary listing application with Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing as soon as this week to sell new shares representing at least 8 per cent of its enlarged share capital during the IPO. The ratio is expected to increase to 15 per cent, resulting in US$8 billion being raised.
The offering, which BOC previously planned to complete before April, was now most likely to be launched in May, sources said........
At $60 billion, the offering will value the bank at 400 billion yuan, a rather conservative figure for a lender that had a net asset value of about 260.7 billion yuan at the end of June last year. Construction Bank last year priced its IPO shares at 1.96 times book value.
