China's biggest mall developer, Dalian Wanda Commercial Properties Co., is planning to sell their shares near the top end of the range and raise about 3.7 billion dollars in an initial public offering in Hong Kong.
The Beijing-based firm plans to sell around 600 million shares at the price of HK$48 each according to an insider. The company's prospectus said that he shares were thus offered at the range of HK$41.80 to HK$49.60 each although no final decision has been made and price range could still be changed.
Wanda Commercial is a firm controlled by billionaire Wang Jianlin. The company is raising money in Hong Kong's biggest IPO in two years in order to build new projects after China has cut the country's interest rates in order to stimulate growth. The company was founded back in 2002 in northeastern China and will be utilizing about 90 percent of the offering's proceeds to fund the development of a many as 10 malls across the nation.
The company had 159 "Wanda Plaza" malls across 110 cities at the end of June this year with 71 fully completed projects. It is the flagship of Dalian Wanda Group Co., a firm who runs a department-store chain along with tourism businesses, a Chinese cinema operator as well as AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. in the United States.
More than half of Wanda Commercial's offering comes from cornerstone investors, who normally agree to hold their stock for at least six months in return for guaranteed allocations.
Another company who recently had an IPO was GN Power Co. which is a Chinese nuclear-plant operator. Their public offering was backed by foreign cornerstone investors. The stock jumped 19 percent on its trading debut in Hong Kong just last week which was the best first-day performance for an initial public offering of at least $1 billion in the city in a year.
