Postal Bank Makes Tepid Debut Amid Report Soros Fund Invested

(Bloomberg) -- Postal Savings Bank of China Co. made a tepid share market debut in Hong Kong as a Chinese business magazine reported that a fund connected with billionaire George Soros was among investors.

The bank’s shares were little changed on Wednesday after a $7.4 billion initial public offering that was the biggest since e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. listed in 2014. No comment was immediately available from Soros Fund Management or Postal Savings Bank. Caixin cited an unidentified person familiar with the matter.

The lender rose 0.2 percent to HK$4.77 as of 10:29 a.m. local time on Wednesday. The benchmark Hang Seng Index fell 0.5 percent.

The share move compares with a 2.2 percent first-day gain for the last big Chinese state lender to list, Agricultural Bank of China Ltd. in July 2010. Two smaller banks to list in Hong Kong this year -- Bank of Tianjin Co. and China Zheshang Bank Co. -- both had unchanged prices on their first trading days.

Postal Savings Bank has a market value of about $49.5 billion, compared with $16 billion for Deutsche Bank AG, $69 billion for Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and about $235 billion for Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd., China’s biggest lender.

The postal bank has more than 500 million retail customers and the most outlets of any Chinese lender.

Bank of America Corp., China International Capital Corp., Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Morgan Stanley were joint sponsors of the offering. UBS Group AG was the sole financial adviser. Investors that bought in before the IPO included UBS, Temasek Holdings Pte and JPMorgan.

Inside a Mega-IPO: China Postal Bank’s (Very Large) Numbers

To contact the reporter on this story: Alfred Liu in Hong Kong at aliu226@bloomberg.net. To contact the editors responsible for this story: Marcus Wright at mwright115@bloomberg.net, Paul Panckhurst, Russell Ward

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