Herbert Smith Freehills has advised China Merchants Bank on its 680,423,172 H-rights shares issuance which raised approximately US$1 billion in Hong Kong. The bank’s latest H-rights offering follows its Shanghai Stock Exchange listing of 2,962,813,544 A-rights shares in September, which raised approximately US$4.5 billion.
The Shenzhen-headquartered bank, the country’s sixth-largest lender by assets, launched a rights share issuance on the basis of offering 1.74 rights shares to every ten existing shares. The H-rights shares commenced trading on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on 2nd October 2013. In total, China Merchants Bank’s rights issuances raised gross proceeds of approximately US$5.5 billion in both venues.
The Herbert Smith Freehills team was led by Beijing partner Tom Chau, who was assisted by Hong Kong associates Sherry Lai and Lawrence Wang.
In 2010, Herbert Smith Freehills also advised China Merchants Bank on its US$3.2 billion global rights issuance, which consisted of a public offering of A-shares, and both public and private H-shares offerings to institutional investors outside China and Hong Kong.
CICC, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and UBS were joint global co-ordinators on the H-share rights issue, and joint lead underwriters with China Merchants Securities and CMB International. China Merchants Finance Holdings acted as the shareholder underwriter. CICC and Goldman Sachs Gao Hua Securities were joint leads on the A-share portion.
