China Telecom

The investment banks that handled China Telecom's US$1.39 billion share offer did a pretty good job in stabilising the share's performance in the month after the listing - keeping it trading at about 5 per cent below its HK$1.48 issue price.

The banks, which announced on Sunday that they had issued an extra 471 million shares as part of the exercise of their 15 per cent over-allotment option, emerged the winners in the deal, having turned it around from a difficult start.

China Telecom, the mainland's largest fixed-line operator, sought to resurrect its initial public offering on Thursday by drastically scaling back the size of the listing to US$1.66bn from as much as US$3.68 bn.