PETROCHINA Co, Asia's biggest oil producer, aims to list its shares in Shanghai in November to raise about 50 billion yuan (US$6.61 billion), sources close to the situation told Reuters yesterday.
The company hired Swiss investment bank UBS' Beijing-based joint venture and CITIC Securities, China's top stock broker, to handle the offer, said the sources, who declined to be identified.
PetroChina also hired China International Capital Co, the Chinese joint venture of Morgan Stanley, to advise on its Shanghai listing, which would be one of the biggest domestic stock offers this year, the sources said.
Investment bankers have been working on PetroChina's Shanghai listing for several months, and the company's top management asked them to secure a November listing, the sources said.
The PetroChina IPO "will be very popular among mainland investors who prefer buying blue-chip stocks these days out of safety concerns," said one of the sources.
"Market liquidity should not be a problem as Beijing is likely to approve several new stock funds before November," said the source, adding that some mutual funds were expected to include PetroChina in their new stock portfolios.
Fund industry sources told Reuters on Wednesday that China was expected to approve at least three new stock-oriented funds in the next few days or weeks, and 20 or 30 more fund managers had applied to the regulator for approval so far this year.
In June, PetroChina said it planned to sell in Shanghai up to four billion shares, which were valued at HK$49.1 billion (US$6.3 billion) based on yesterday's close in Hong Kong of HK$12.28 apiece.
But the company did not give a time frame for its planned Shanghai listing.