Today in China Finance: China Eastern soars, for 30,000 kuai you too can get lucky...with a phone number

Singapore’s Temasek Holdings and Singapore Airline’s joint bid for a 24 percent stake of China Eastern Airline finally received its blessing from Beijing last week. The deal valued CEA at HK$3.80 per share. China Eastern’s Hong Kong listing after a three month halt resumed trading earlier today and promptly doubled from HK$ 3.73 to HK$ 7.50 before paring back to settle around HK$ 6.90 in the afternoon. Today’s surge in gave the two new investors an instant HK$5.84 billion profit on paper, about USD $750 million. Not bad for a day’s work! Shares of all four major Chinese airlines (the other three are Air China, China Southern and Hainan Air) traded on the domestic exchange rallied 10 percent on the news, the maximum daily limit allowed under local rules. In related news, the Shanghai Composite Index closed at another a record high, up 102 points, or 2 percent, at 5321.

156 prefix phone numbers are now available to China Unicom’s GSM customers. And for a measly 30,000 kuai prepayment into your account, you can have your very own “88888” or “66666” digits. The Chinese consider those two numbers particularly lucky. Other variants of less lucky number can be had for a bit less.

Crossposted on Whampoafn