Mainland IPOs help London raise $68b in nine months
Britain's Alternative Investment Market (AIM) is heading for another record fund-raising year partly thanks to initial public offerings from China.
The second board of the London Stock Exchange raised GBP4.95 billion ($68.53 billion) in the first three quarters compared with GBP4.66 billion in the same period last year. The huge proceeds are sure to be the envy of its Hong Kong counterpart, the Growth Enterprise Market, which raised only 286.7 million between January and September.
Jane Zhu, head of Asia-Pacific company services of the London Stock Exchange, said it had only been in recent years that AIM, which was established in 1995, started to promote itself in the mainland with numerous campaigns to attract Chinese companies.
She said the beauty of AIM lay in the fact that listing applications were vetted by nominated advisers (also known as nomads), not by the London Stock Exchange.
This means the nomads have to stake their reputation and credit on 'babysitting' the listing candidates.
'Unlike the regulatory framework in Hong Kong, it is a lifetime job to serve as a nomad for the new listed company while the counselling period is only two years for the GEM,' said Ms Zhu.