A war of words between the chief executive of an Amazon.com-like e-commerce firm and its initial public offering underwriter threatens to upset Wall Streets banks' efforts to take Chinese start-ups to the US capital market.
Li Guoqing, chief executive of E-Commerce China Dangdang - which made a dazzling debut on the New York Stock Exchange last month - fired the first salvo on his microblog by accusing Morgan Stanley of undervaluing the online bookstore in setting the listing price.
'You guys were distracted by the tension between the two Koreas when writing the prospectus,' he wrote. 'I lost my temper.'
Dangdang floated 17 million American depositary receipt shares at US$16 each. The final price was raised from a range of between US$11 and US$13 originally planned.
On December 9, when trading of the Beijing-based company started, shares skyrocketed 86.9 per cent to US$29.91. Dangdang closed at US$33.86 on Friday.
Li contends that Morgan Stanley had been fully aware that a fair valuation of Dangdang should amount to US$2 billion but it deliberately lowered the IPO price to ensure a successful fund-raising. The price of US$16 translated into a capitalisation of only US$1.1 billion, he said.