China's leading Internet search engine Baidu.com made a dazzling
Wall Street debut on Friday with its shares more than
quadrupled.?
The Beijing-based company's shares closed at US$122.54 on the
Nasdaq, a 354 percent gain from its initial public offering price.
That represented the biggest one-day gain since the final days of
the dot-com bubble when IPOs regularly soared.
However, its chairman Robin Li said his company would rather
focus on its long-term interests than its day-to-day stock market
performance.
"Baidu is the leading search engine in China, what we care most
about is providing the best search experience for our Chinese
users. I would like to spend more time on the execution of
operations, and I think the interests of our shareholders will be
best served in this way."
Named after an ancient Chinese poem, Baidu was set up five and
half years ago by two US-educated men, and the world's No.1 search
engine Google has more than 2 percent stake in the company.
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(CRI August 7, 2005)