With over 20,000 bidders taking part at the Ha Noi Securities Trading Centre, yesterday's IPO by Bao Viet, the nation's leading insurer, went off without a fuss and little of the jostle and disorder that has marked previous high-profile IPOs.
Bao Viet auctioned nearly 60mil shares at an initial offering price of VND30,500(US$1.90).
The use of a silent auction process smoothed things out. Sealed bids were received at Bao Viet's 13 bidding agents throughout the country. A total of thirty sealed ballot-boxes were then transfered to the Ha Noi Securities Trading Centre (HaSTC).
At 8.30 am, the Hanoi bourse started the auction by opening the ballot boxes.
Le Thang, an investor from Hanoi, said: "I have been standing here since 8am and I am very surprised by the tranquil atmosphere for the IPO of such a big company like Bao Viet".
The silent auction was deliberately chosen to take pressure off the HaSTC in an IPO that was expected to set a record for the number of bids, said an official of the exchange.
The bourse simply lacked the capacity to handle more than 3-5,000 investors in a live auction, he said. The silent auction also had the positive benefit of helping investors avoid the "imitative" psychology that can occur when directly bidding at the bourse.
Mai Hoa, another Hanoi investor, agreed, "When directly bidding, it's true that investors unavoidably tend to see how other investors are bidding and follow suit".
The silent auction allowed bids to be kept secret, creating a fairer process, she said.
Many investors predicted that the successful bid price would be below VND100,000 ($6.20). As the deadline for bidding approached, some investors at one of the bidding agents revealed that they had only bid in the range of VND57,000-62,000 ($3.55-3.86) per share.
As of 10.30am yesterday, about 400 bid envelopes had been opened and the price hovered between VND50,000 ($3.10) and VND110,000 ($6.85).
HaSTC deputy director Nguyen Vu Quang Trung said that, with over 20,000 participating investors, it would take the Hanoi centre four to five days to open and record every bid.
Among the 20,368 investors registering to buy Bao Viet shares were 277 institutional investors (45 of them foreign) and 20,091 individuals (158 foreign).
Bao Viet has charter capital of VND6.8tril ($423.7mil) and targets net profits this year of VND1.1tril ($68.5mil).
Source: VNE
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment