China's Largest Bank Achieves World's Largest IPO
On Friday October 20 the Industrial & Commercial Bank of China, the nation's largest banking institution, tallied the world's largest initial public offering, listing its stock on both the Hong Kong and the Shanghai exchanges, and raising some $19.07 billion in the process.

The previous record was held by NTT DoCoMo Inc, the Japanese mobile phone company, which raised $18.4 billion with its IPO in 1998. In May the Bank of China raised $11.2 billion with its IPO on the heels of $9.4 billion for China Construction Bank last year.

ICBC is selling 13 billion shares in Shanghai with 35.39 billion listed in Hong Kong. Together the listings account for approximately 14.6 percent of the company's share capital. The global offering is being managed by Merrill Lynch & Co., Credit Suisse Group, ICEA Capital Ltd, Deutsche Bank AG, and China International Capital Corp.

William Melchere, chief Asia economist at Macquarie was quoted in an October 20 article for MarketWatch. ("ICBC offering raises $19 billion; world's biggest IPO") "It is very significant from a macro point of view. You now have the liquidity from these Chinese bank IPOs that is going to fund continued loan growth as we move into 2007, so to some extent, I think what it is telling us is that the risk of a massive slowdown in China is not going to come from a liquidity crunch."

ICBC was established in 1984 by the Chinese government. Its 21,000 branch offices serve more than 150 million customers and the current staff is 360,000 according to numbers acquired by the BBC.