DEAL NEWS: The flood of IPOs that law firms are advising at the moment signals the return of vibrant capital markets in Greater China. In an extreme case, Clifford Chance announced today that it has advised on four IPOs on the Hong Kong Exchange this week, including three offerings today.
Equally busy are some of the leading PRC capital markets firms. Beijing Jia Yuan, for example, has recently acted for the issuer in the A + H IPO of Metallurgical Corp of China (MCC), one of the mainland's biggest engineering and construction firms. MCC raised US$5.3bn in the world's second largest IPO so far this year. China State Construction Engineering Corporation's US$6.2bn IPO in Shanghai remains this year's largest IPO worldwide.
In the past few months, Jia Yuan has also been involved in the Shenzhen IPO of Accelink Technologies, the US$586m private share placement of Changjiang Securities, the US$1.7bn corporate bond issuance of China Communication Construction, and the IPO of China International Travel Service - to be launched in October in Shanghai.
"It's clear to us that the number of transactions we are working on has increased significantly since June this year. Many stopped projects have resumed and some new deals have been initiated," said Liu Wen, partner of Jian Yuan who worked on the MCC IPO together with lead partners Yan Yu and Xu Ying.
Beijing firm Tian Yuan acted as PRC counsel for the underwriters in MCC's IPO in Shanghai and Hong Kong. The firm has also had a busy August and September, advising on Everbright Securities' A-share IPO and Shangyu Water Treatment Development's corporate bond issuance.
On the Hong Kong IPO of MCC, Slaughter and May and Davis Polk acted as the issuer's Hong Kong counsel and US counsel respectively, while the underwriters (Morgan Stanley, Citi, CITIC and CICC) turned to Freshfields and Shearman & Sterling for Hong Kong and US legal advice respectively.
Related stories: