COSCO ends 10 percent lower on debut day

COSCO Holdings, the Chinese mainland's biggest container shipping company, fell 10 percent to 3.825 HK dollars (0.5 US dollar) on its debut day on Hong Kong Exchange Thursday.

Its share opened at 3.7 HK dollars (0.46 US dollar), lower than its initial offering price of 4.25 HK dollars (0.55 US dollar). The company raised 9.5 billion HK dollars (1.2 billion US dollars) by selling 2.24 billion shares.

The stock's weak trading debut was not unexpected as its IPO poorly subscribed due to concerns in the global shipping cycle.

The retail tranche was not fully subscribed while the institutional tranche was more than 3 times oversubscribed and the unsubscribed retail shares were reallocated to the institutional tranche.

Earlier this month, another two large mainland companies, Shenhua Energy and Bank of Communication were listed in Hong Kong Exchange, raising 23 billion HK dollars (3 billion US dollars) and 4.6 billion HK dollars (600 million US dollars) respectively.

Source: Xinhua