Deutsche Boerse will go ahead with plans to open an office in Beijing to attract Chinese IPOs, despite the global financial crisis, a senior official at the exchange said. "We are at the downward phase, but it won't hinder us to promote the Deutsche Boerse in China," the exchange's Alexander Graf von Preysing, a senior vice president responsible for IPOs, told Reuters at the Hamburg Summit: China meets Europe.
The exchange hopes to get regulator approval to open a Beijing office by the end of this year, after putting China on its radar two years ago. But it is a late comer among major exchanges' race to Beijing to lure Chinese offerings as IPOs elsewhere dwindle.
The NYSE Euronext and Nasdaq OMX opened offices in December last year. The London Stock Exchange, the most popular European venue for Chinese firms, followed in January this year.
But Graf von Preysing is confident the exchange's effort to attract Chinese listings is paying off, with four to five Chinese IPO candidates in the pipeline seeking listings on the main board. "Only one year after the effort, we attracted our first Chinese listing in 2007. And we had seven Chinese listings last year, that's encouraging," Graf von Preysing said.
In July 2007, waste processing firm ZhongDe Waste Technology raised 109 million euros ($152.7 million) in the first main market floatation by a Chinese issuer on the German bourse. That was followed by two main market listings in 2007, Asia Bamboo and Greater China Precision Components, which raised a combined 111 million euros. In July this year, Business Media China raised 31 million euros.