Five securities firms, including three international ones and two domestic companies, will help China CITIC Bank raise about US$2 billion in an initial public offering (IPO) in Hong Kong, the bank's president confirmed yesterday.

 

CITIC Bank, the financial services arm of China's flagship State investment conglomerate CITIC Group, has hired CICC and CITIC Securities to arrange its listing.

 

Citigroup, Lehman Brothers and HSBC are also its underwriters, Chen Xiaoxian, president of CITIC Bank, told China Daily yesterday.

 

The IPO of the country's seventh-largest bank comes as investors are showing increasing interest in Chinese banking stocks.

 

Bank of China priced its shares towards the top end of the price range in its IPO, despite a slump in global stock markets.

 

"The intensive listing of Chinese banks this year will weigh on CITIC Bank, but is not likely to affect our IPO too much," Chen said.

 

CITIC Bank will compete for investor funds with Hong Kong share sales planned for later this year by rivals the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China and China Merchants Bank.

 

(China Daily May 31, 2006)