THE ROAD TO an initial public offering can be far from straightforward for a company seeking overseas capital. Whichever stock exchange a company decides upon, there are many market and regulatory hurdles to overcome before it can make its shares available to the general investment community.
Accounting, legal and vetting requirements take time and energy in the months before a listing, and the ability to maintain ongoing compliance after listing with local rules and regulations can be expensive, as well as onerous.
CIG Yangtze Ports listed on Hong Kong's Growth Enterprise Market (GEM) last September. It has a diversified list of shareholders, including the listed Shui On group, MOL (Asia), which is a subsidiary of Japanese shipping group Mitsui OSK, and London-based fund management firm Spinnaker.
Although the CIG group is Hong Kong-based, its business - the construction, development and operation of container ports - is exclusively in the central China region.
The industry in which it operates is capital intensive and growth oriented. Hence the decision was taken by management to list in order to raise capital.
CIG chief financial officer Frederick Wong said Hong Kong was chosen because it was the closest major capital market to the mainland.