THE BIGGEST IPO ON EARTH

摘要

Never accuse the Chinese of thinking small. The global public offering in late October of China Construction Bank, the mainland's third-largest bank, is set to raise a head-turning $8 billion. That's the biggest IPO on the planet this year, and the biggest anywhere since Kraft Foods went public in 2001, according to market tracker Dealogic. The offer is vastly oversubscribed as investors line up to buy a piece of an institution with $521.8 billion in assets—the first of China's Big Four state-owned banks to publicly list shares overseas. Even the prospectus, a directory-thick document riddled with footnotes and warnings, is one of the hottest books in Hong Kong, a city legendary for investor zeal. Construction Bank's offering, though, is far more than a Chinese affair. U.S. in- stitutional investors have been crowding in to hear the pitch from Chairman Guo Shuqing, who just completed a road show in the U.S. to keep enthusiasm stoked. American buyers are looking for a repeat of last August's China frenzy, when Baidu.com Inc., a Beijing search-engine outfit, blew away a five-year record on NASDAQ for best first-day trading performance as its stock jumped fivefold, to $154 per share. Baidu has since cooled off, but it's still up 140% over the initial price.