Whenever I give presentations to European or American audiences, I tell them that the Western world does not realize what is happening in China. Everything is growing so fast here, that very soon China will start overtaking them. And in some ways that has already happened. This morning I was quite surprised when I read in the Shanghai Daily that in 2006 more capital was raised in China and Hong Kong IPO’s than the total of all IPO’s on the NYSE, NASDAQ and American Stock Exchange. The figure for the Chinese exchanges was USD 62 billion versus USD 48 billion in the USA.
A big part of this was of course due to the mega-IPO’s of ICBC and the Bank of China, but it is not a one-year outlier. For this year PriceWaterhouseCoopers expects a total of about 58 billion in Greater China IPO’s, against 50 billion in the US. The time is over when a Chinese company would first think about a NASDAQ listing before considering a domestic public offering. This is partly due to the increasing regulations that you have to fulfill in the US (they are slowly digging their own grave), but also because much more investment capital is available in China.
Europe and the USA beware, China has become a force to reckon with and this will hit you sooner than you think. Don’t believe all the stories in the media about China still being backwards, China is where things are happening now.
Marc,
I am not surprised. If you look at market maturity, then China has a long way to go.
So many companies are formed and build in China at the moment. THere are still major opportunities.
In the last 12 months there have been some major IPO’s indeed.
Now I agree that the market is developing rapidly. In certain industries it might even go faster then the Japanese development last century.
But its all “koffiedik kijken” time will teach us if they catch up with efficiency, effictiveness and creativity. Even if they dont catch up that fast with the previous KPI’s, due to its size China will still be a force to consider
(hence i am in Asia and not in Europe 🙂 )