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A few years ago, Hongkonger Sally Ng had never even considered buying shares in Bank of China (BOC).

 

Although BOC has been well-known since it became the third note issuer in the city in 1994, the 45-year-old homemaker said her knowledge of the lender in the 1990s was simply that it was a big State-owned bank struggling with mountains of bad debts.

 

But last week, Ng joined a long queue of Hongkongers seeking 6,000 shares in BOC's recent US$9.7-billion initial public offering (IPO) in Hong Kong the world's largest in six years and the biggest ever launched by a mainland firm.

 

"I can see it's improving," she said, citing the listing of its unit BOC (Hong Kong), shareholding restructuring, the introduction of overseas investors, and its recent IPO.

 

Local investor confidence in BOC and the mainland's banking sector as a whole are reflected in the popularity of BOC's offering, analysts said.

 

"One of every seven Hong Kong people is going for the shares," said Fu Hung-man, dealing director of Polaris Securities. "It says everything."

 

Institutional investors, too, gave their vote of confidence.

 

David Li, chairman of Bank of East Asia (BEA), Hong Kong's fifth-largest lender in terms of assets, said on Monday he would keep BOC shares for at least one year in a long-term commitment. BEA, along with its subsidiary, subscribed to US$180 million worth of BOC shares.

 

Mainland lenders, big ones in particular, are pushing along the path to internationalization, transparency, efficiency and greater strength, although they have a long way to go, Fu said.

 

But overseas listing is a good way to achieve these goals, an anonymous analyst said, whose securities firm is involved in the BOC deal.

 

"It spurs them to enhance transparency," he said. "Otherwise, they will lose favor among investors."

 

Other mainland banks, including top lender Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Minsheng Bank and China CITIC Bank, are reported to be planning for IPOs in Hong Kong.

 

Investment-minded Hongkongers after quick returns are hoping BOC shares will follow the spectacular performance of recently listed mainland stocks to jump by more than 10 percent on its trading debut tomorrow.

 

"I hope its shares would soar, like those of Bank of Communications (BoCom) and China Construction Bank (CCB)," Ng said. BoCom and CCB, which were listed in Hong Kong last year, saw their prices surge by 94 percent and 43.6 percent yesterday, respectively.

 

Analysts generally believed BOC's shares would not skyrocket on the first day, citing the example of CCB, the bulk of BOC, and a relatively sluggish market sentiment in previous days. CCB ended its first day unchanged.

 

BOC's shares may rise 5.6 percent tomorrow, according to a median of six Hong Kong-based analysts surveyed by China Daily. Two of them are from securities houses that are underwriters of BOC's IPO.

 

Analysts' predictions ranged from a 20 percent rise to a flat day.

 

"Behemoths always move slowly but sturdily," one of them said, who spoke on condition of anonymity and predicted BOC may end the first day flat.

 

But underestimating BOC's strength would be a big mistake, the analyst said.

 

"It has everything that is needed for a market mover in terms of size, potential and popularity," he said.

 

(China Daily May 31, 2006)