Results tagged “chinaconstructionbank”

Just as the rest of the world is getting swept away in a social networking frenzy, googling for keywords such as "Badoo", "Facebook", "Ebuddy", "Hi5" and even "Second Life", Chinese googlers it seems are a completely different species. In 2007, four out of the top ten keywords among Chinese googlers were wealth-related, searching for keywords such as "stock", "China Merchants Bank", "Industrial and Commercial Bank of China" and "China Construction Bank". Bank of China is conspicuously absent from the list!

China Construction Bank’s A share began trading yesterday. The ￥6.45 IPO closed at ￥8.53 , a whopping 32 percent gain, eye popping in any Western markets, but here in China, a big yawn. Two other smaller companies went public on the same day, both advanced 200 percent plus, cha-ching! CCB was the largest China IPO to date(￥58 billion), but that title will soon belong to Shenhua Energy, the nation’s largest coal miner. The offering attracted a record ￥2.6 trillion(USD $355 billion) of funds looking to buy shares. The actual amount raised, based on projected ￥37/share and 1.8 billion shares offered would fall somewhere in the neighborhood of ￥66.6 billion, still a lot of zeros.

China Construction Bank, the second largest state owned bank, priced its highly anticipated A share offering last night, at 6.45 yuan a piece, hitting the upper range of the forecast. The nine billion share sale will raise 58.05 billion yuan(USD $7.72 billion), the largest offering ever in the domestic market. Shares were 40 times oversubscribed by retail investors and 32 times by institutional investors. Analysts estimate CCB shares will fetch between 7.8 to 9.6 yuan a share in the secondary market. Its Hong Kong traded H share, which confers an equal portion of ownership, closed yesterday at HKD $6.84. (1 HKD= 0.97 yuan) In related news, Bank of Beijing, which we profiled a few day ago began trading today. The 12.50 yuan IPO shares closed at 22.68 yuan, an 80 percent pop to whoever lucky enough to get in on the offering.

We imagine we aren't the only people a little skeptical of the armor-clad and heavily armed guards that accompany the vehicles that transport money to and an from various banks in China. The guards are almost always very young and fresh-faced and look as though they might have, the day before, occupied a seat at a local internet bar playing Counter-Strike and urinating in an empty Coke bottle. We always try to steer clear of these guys, assuming their guns are really loaded and their trigger fingers itchy. And after reading this graphic account (in Chinese) of an incident that happened about a week ago outside a China Construction Bank in Shenyang, Liaoning province, we're sure you will do the same.

China has moved a step closer to diversifying its US$1.07 trillion in foreign reserves, with the yet-unofficial appointment of two senior officials to head new vehicles that will seek to invest a portion of China's reserves, which are the largest in the world.

An American man was arraigned in a Guangzhou court yesterday for destruction of private property. Michael Edward Lovett allegedly flew into a rage one late evening past April, when a China Construction Bank ATM mistakenly confiscated his bank card (which happens in China when an incorrect PIN is entered the third time). Mr. Lovett was then caught on surveillance cameras shattering the ATM screen and then completely destroying the machine — all in a failed attempt to get his card back. He was arrested the following afternoon at his hotel.

Shanghaiist once recalls accompanying a friend to the hospital and asking the doctor, just out of curiosity, how one gets Prozac or other antidepressants in China. Despite our strivings, it's hard sometimes to remain optimistic about China's future, especially when you read articles like this one from MacLean's about all the problems that China's economy faces. Many people are particularly interested in China's oft-troubled banking industry, especially because later this month China Construction Bank will IPO in Hong Kong.