Deals that changed the market in 2006: ICBC’s initial public offering

January 30, 2007

The flotation of the Chinese bank overcame the hazards of a simultaneous dual listing to attract enormous demand worldwide – but it was, perhaps, at too high a price.

Six deals that changed the market in 2006

Deal type: $21.9 billion initial public offering (including greenshoe)
Issuer: Industrial and Commercial Bank of China
Joint global coordinators & sponsors: CICC, ICEA, Merrill Lynch
Joint bookrunners, lead managers of HK IPO & international offering: Merrill Lynch, CICC, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, ICEA
Financial adviser to ICBC: Lehman Brothers
Date: October 2006

If there was one deal that symbolizes the strength of global capital markets in 2006, it is the $21.9 billion IPO of mainland Chinese lender Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC). The last of the three main state banks to be privatized (the fourth, Agricultural Bank of China, is thought unlikely to list internationally) ICBC might have benefited from the successful debuts of Bank of China and China Construction Bank, at least in terms of valuation. However, ICBC faced unique challenges that make the outstanding success of its October IPO on the Hong Kong and Shanghai exchanges remarkable.

In size alone, ICBC earns contender status as a deal of the year since it changed global markets. The largest ever IPO globally, it beat Japan’s 1998 IPO of NTT DoCoMo by a wide margin.