Awards for Achievement 2010: Day 1

The following deals, the banks that worked on them and their clients will be honoured at an awards dinner at the Four Seasons hotel in Hong Kong on February 17. If you would like to book a table at the event, please contact Stephanie Cheung on +852 2122 5225 or [email protected].


BEST CHINA DEAL
Agricultural Bank of China’s $22.1 billion IPO
Bookrunners: ABCI Securities, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Macquarie, Morgan Stanley, China International Capital Corp, Citic Securities, China Galaxy Securities, Guotai Junan Securities
Legal advisers: Allen & Overy, Davis Polk, DeHeng Law Offices, Freshfields, Haiwen & Partners, Herbert Smith

While the size of this deal is eye-catching in itself, it is when you set it against the transformation the former agricultural sector policy bank has gone through in the past 10 years to get it to a point where it could contemplate a listing at all, that the extent of the achievement becomes clear. Like several of the other IPOs that are being recognised with awards this year, ABC completed its dual-listing in Shanghai and Hong Kong at a time when the Chinese equity markets were severely underperforming and the international markets were highly volatile, leading to the cancellation of numerous IPOs globally. Even so, the bank set itself a tough deadline to get the deal done in just three months, from mandate to debut, to grab what it viewed as a viable market window and avoid clashing with the significant follow-on share sales being flagged by its domestic peers. And with executive vice president Pan Gongsheng keeping a firm grip both on the IPO process and the bookrunners involved, the bank was able to achieve its ambitious target.