Jake's View | This huge IPO shows we don’t need a ‘third board’ to attract tech stocks

Zhong An Online Property and Casualty Insurance, China’s first online-only insurer, closed 9 per cent up from its IPO price on Thursday in its Hong Kong debut. With an oversubscription of nearly 400 times from retail investors, the company had priced its IPO at the top end of the expected range, raising US$1.5 billion in the city’s biggest ever fintech offering.

SCMP, September 29

Let’s have this again. A China financial technology company, complying with all the listing rules of the main board of our stock exchange, was 400 times oversubscribed by retail investors on an already inflated new issue price, which then jumped a further 9.5 per cent on the first trading day.

So why do stocks like this need the new trash board that stock exchange boss Charles Li Xiaojia wants to set up?

Here we have proof that our main board, operating with common sense safeguards for the protection of investors, has no problem at all in attracting investors to a “new economy” stock, even when it is only a ribboned-up insurance company with dubious profit prospects and without its own distribution.

But Charles still says that removing all these safeguards and allowing dual class listings in which corporate sharks can take investors’ money while not sharing their risks is instead the best way to keep the public coming.