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The Shanghai Oriental Pearl Tower in east China's Shanghai, March 12, 2020. /Xinhua
Editor's note: Matteo Giovannini is a finance professional at ICBC in Beijing and a member of the China Task Force at the Italian Ministry of Economic Development. The article reflects the author's views, and not necessarily those of CGTN.
The development of China's domestic financial market has reached another considerable milestone in these days when the data released by the American multinational professional services firm Ernst Young have showed that Shanghai topped the global league table of initial public offering (IPO) in the first quarter of 2020.
The leading position comes as a result of a total of 33 companies that raised over seven billion U.S. dollars by combining the Shanghai Stock Exchange and the startup-focused STAR market, overcoming New York's Nasdaq where 17 companies raised over five billion U.S. dollars, with a major contribution coming from the Beijing-Shanghai Speed Railway IPO that accounted for 4.4 billion U.S. dollars early this year.
The IPO global league table's result shows the growing importance of financial markets in the Asia Pacific region where there is an ever increasing attraction of capital and where, according to the New Financial Global Capital MarketsGrowth Index, Asian markets could account for 49 percent of global capital markets over the next two decades with half of the growth coming from China.
Shanghai has certainly benefited in the first quarter of the year from the coronavirus outbreak that has been causing massive disruption in global financial markets and that has forced many companies operating in industries severely hit by the virus to cancel or to postpone their IPOs to a future date.
The scenery of China's Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, June 8, 2017. /Xinhua
This is what happened to traditionally leading IPO spot such as Hong Kong that, even though it has registered a higher number of IPOs compared to Shanghai, the size of the deals have been smaller and the announced debuts of Tencent-backed We Doctor, JD Logistics and China Bohai Bank have been moved to later this year.
The great advantage Hong Kong has retained over the years as a gateway to China, that has given the city the status of location of preference for raising capital over other important financial centers in the region such as Singapore and Tokyo, is starting now to be challenged by a series of important policies aimed at supporting Shanghai's future development into a truly international financial center by 2020.
The launch of Stock Connect programs representsa clear sign of the willingness of the authorities to interconnect and integrate the domestic market with the global financial system and this move has elevated the growing role of Shanghai as a global financial hub with the aim in future to be able to compete with the world's two leading hubs,New York and London.
The failed attempt by the Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearingfor a takeover of the London Stock Exchange has shown how international markets now prefer Shanghai over Hong Kong as a strategic partner because it represents a direct channel to the huge Chinese market.
The active contribution of the Chinese government with ad-hoc policies towards an opening-up of domestic financial markets to foreign investors with the recent regulatory approvals to Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, UBS, JPMorgan Chase and Nomura, that have taken majority control of local joint ventures, and the implementationof faster approval process for prospective issuers to sustain the IPO activity at the Shanghai Stock Exchange and at the recently launched Nasdaq-style tech board STAR market, could have the effect to increase the chances for Shanghai to maintain the leading position in the IPO ranking for the rest of the year.
Moreover, a combination of high number of Chinese startups, that sees Beijing Zhongguancun as one of the most active startup ecosystems in Asia, and targeted government fiscal policies such as tax extensions to cash-strapped businesses to sustain the economy in the recovery from COVID-19 is expected to lead to an increasing number of companies eager to list in the domestic market where valuations remain at the moment higher than anywhere else and where Chinese firms can find a familiar environment protected from the political risk of being listed abroad.
The dominant role that Asia is expected to play in the 21st century due to its huge demographic dividend, to its ever increasing contribution to the global GDP and to its vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystem will have the natural effect to attract a large volume of capitals to the region becoming a game changer in the financial markets'geography for long time dominated by Western hubs.
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