Shanghai bourse to start trading nickel, tin futures

    THE Shanghai Futures Exchange will start trading nickel and tin futures contract March 27, China’s securities regulator said Friday.

    The China Securities Regulatory Commission said the launch of the two metals futures is significant to China as the world’s producer and consumer. The Shanghai Futures Exchange is the sole marketplace for base metals futures contracts in China, the world’s top consumer and producer of most metals.

    GF Securities to gauge investor interest for IPO

    SHENZHEN-LISTED brokerage GF Securities Ltd., the mainland’s fourth-largest broker by assets, is set to begin sounding out investors for a US$1 billion Hong Kong initial public offering (IPO) today, in what could be Hong Kong’s biggest IPO this year.

    GF Securities received listing approval from the Hong Kong stock exchange late Thursday, a person with direct knowledge of the matter said Friday. It will begin premarketing, or gauging investor interest, today and price the offering by the end of March.

    Dairy Farm gets nod for Yonghui stake buy

    DAIRY Farm International Holdings said Friday it has obtained final approval from the China Securities Regulatory Commission for its US$908 million deal to buy a 19.99 percent stake in Shanghai-listed Yonghui Superstores Co..

    The deal was announced in August last year. Dairy Farm, the Asian retail arm of Jardine Matheson, operates supermarkets and retail stores such as Wellcome in Hong Kong, and 7-11 convenience stores in both Singapore, Hong Kong and the Chinese mainland.

    Orient Securities’ IPO 90 times oversubscribed

    ORIENT Securities Co.’s US$1.6 billion initial public offering (IPO), the largest domestic listing since 2011, was oversubscribed by a factor of more than 90 as investors scrambled for a sale boosted by new rules capping IPO prices and soaring industry profits.

    Under Chinese rules, the process involved in the firm’s roughly 10 billion yuan sale means the more than 930 billion yuan (US$148.59 billion) put forward to buy shares is now “frozen” for three days until a lottery takes place to decide who gets the stock. The number was disclosed in a company statement posted on the Shanghai Stock Exchange on Friday. The massive demand for shares in Orient Securities means the nearly US$150 billion funds now on ice is the largest amount frozen during a domestic IPO in five years.