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Bloomberg
Chinese lenders have leaped ahead of their Wall Street peers in global rankings for initial public offerings, as China wraps up a record year for listings which bucked one of the worst slowdowns in deals history.
CITIC Securities Co pushed ahead of Goldman Sachs Group Inc as the top underwriter of IPOs this year, followed by China International Capital Corp. It’s the first time the top two spots are held by mainland lenders since at least 1999.
Six out of the world’s top 10 IPO banks are Chinese, commanding an almost 28% market share. Citigroup Inc is ranked third this year.
Chinese brokerages have muscled into the IPO market historically dominated by global banks, particularly in places like Hong Kong. A push by mainland authorities in recent years to encourage more listings on domestic exchanges will offer local lenders a larger IPO market to tap in China.
At the same time, rising tensions with the US have caused a near-total collapse in New York IPOs by Chinese companies — a big business for Wall Street — and pushed them to list domestically or in Hong Kong instead.
“The trend of some firms opting for a Hong Kong listing next year may continue, and that share of the market might be filled by Chinese banks, rather than foreign banks which have an edge in overseas listings,†said Wang Yugang, fund manager at Beijing Axe Asset Management Co.
While listings worldwide have suffered their steepest year-on-year slump since 2008 on the back of rampant inflation and interest rate hikes, the Chinese IPO market has had a record year with $93.8 billion raised so far.