Investors spent 830.63 billion yuan (US$113.32 billion) in the
Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets as of last Friday, nearly four
times more investments than for the whole of last year.
Their spending was fueled by a frenzy for investments in initial
public offerings as well as purchases of subsequent share offerings
and corporate bonds.
By the end of this year a total of more than 841.49 billion yuan
is estimated to have been spent in the stock markets. The amount is
equivalent to the total collected by the two markets in the first
14 years since their set up in late 1990.
IPO funds
More than half of the amount was gotten through 120 IPOs
launched this year. They raked in about US$61 billion to rank first
in the world.
The IPO funds collected over the year outpaced the money floated
on the New York Stock Exchange by US$10 billion.
A bigger number of large IPOs are expected next year from
numerous centrally administered state-owned enterprises. In
addition, domestic companies that had listed in Hong Kong were
encouraged by officials to also go public in the mainland
market.
Of the 43 Hong Kong-listed SOEs, 13 had not offered mainland
shares. They included such domestic giants as China Telecom and
Dongfeng Motor Group.
This year, additional share offerings of listed companies grew
two-fold. A total of 311.9 billion yuan was raised through 133
private placements and 24 subsequent offerings as of last Friday.
Another 242 companies also planned to issue additional shares.
This year's bond offerings have seen the issue of two types of
new bonds -corporate bonds and bonds with attached warrants. They
each raised 20 billion yuan.
(Xinhua News Agency December 27, 2007)
