China mainland records 125 IPOs in 2014: Deloitte

The Chinese mainland stock market saw 125 initial public offerings (IPO) in 2014, raising 78.7 billion yuan (12.86 billion U.S. dollars), consultancy Deloitte said.

This still fell short of the 154 IPOs, which raised 103.4 billion in 2012, the year before IPOs were suspended, Deloitte said.

The China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC), the securities watchdog, approved seven rounds of new offerings since June 2014, when the Commission restarted the IPO market.

Deloitte figures showed that IPOs from the Main Board in Shanghai contributed the most funds (43 percent), followed by the Small- and Medium-sized Enterprise Board (29 percent) and Shenzhen's ChiNext (28 percent) .

China's Nasdaq-style board of growth enterprises the ChiNext Board, which started trading on Oct. 30, 2009, mainly lists hi-tech companies and those with high growth potential.

In terms of new listings, despite a new rule allowing applicants to choose between listing on either the Shanghai or Shenzhen bourse, ChiNext (40 percent) took a dominant position while the Main Board (34 percent) and SME Board (26 percent) trailed.

Anthony Wu from Deloitte China's China A-Share Capital Market Leader, said the CSRC's commentary of getting 100 IPO candidates listed from June to end of 2014 suggested that the market would record at least 23 IPOs during January and February 2015.

The increase in the number of companies added to the Public Offering Review Committee of the CSRC in the last two weeks of 2014 also indicates that the authority is speeding up its issuance pace in order to ease pressure on more than 600 enterprises still waiting for IPO review, Wu said.

He also said upcoming listings are expected to be small and medium in scale in view of the ongoing concern over market liquidity.

They will also focus on companies from the manufacturing, consumer and retail and emerging industry sectors. For businesses that are seeking substantial funding through IPOs, many are likely to continue to head to Hong Kong, he added.

Hong Kong has enjoyed another record year in 2014. Its new IPOs experienced a double-digit rally from 2013 to 11 percent, while funds raised surged 35 percent.

Excluding the transfer of seven listings from the Growth Enterprise Market to the Main Board, the market completed 115 IPOs raising 227.7 billion HK dollars (29.3 billion U.S. dollars) in 2014 against 104 IPOs raising 168.9 billion HK dollars in 2013.

The New York Stock Exchange clearly stood first in the global IPO race in 2014 with proceeds of 74.1 billion U.S. dollars despite the fact that Hong Kong recorded four huge IPOs in December.

The London Stock Exchange took third place with 24.8 billion U.S. dollars, while proceeds of 23.2 billion U.S. dollars raised on the NASDAQ saw it ranked fourth.