The London Stock Exchange expects to win at least 20 Chinese listings in 2006, as Europe's biggest bourse takes aim at the growing field of young Chinese entrepreneurial firms looking to raise capital.
A team of LSE officials is co-ordinating with Chinese regulators to encourage more qualified Chinese companies to go for London listings this year, said Jane Zhu, the bourse's top Asia Pacific executive.
At the same time, the exchange also wants to attract more privately-owned Chinese firms to its Alternative Investment Market (AIM), a second-tier board aimed at smaller but fast-growing companies.
"For China, we are targeting two types - big-sized state-owned firms, like Air China, and small but high potential privately-owned companies," Zhu said in a roundtable interview in Shanghai, China's financial hub.
Air China Ltd, the country's biggest airline, listed its shares in Hong Kong and London in a $1.2 billion initial public offering in December 2004.
"We expect at least 20 Chinese companies to go for listing on our AIM this year," said Zhu, adding that 16 Chinese firms launched initial public offerings on AIM in 2005. "On average, an AIM IPO can raise $10 million."
The LSE wants to take business from its trans-Atlantic rivals, the New York Stock Exchange and the tech-oriented Nasdaq , saying listing there is more difficult due to tougher compliance rules enacted in the wake of the wave of corporate scandals in the 1990s and earlier this decade. She estimated that US listings can cost a company as much as an extra $5 million a year for compliance.