Firm Advises Underwriters in Bank of Guizhou Company Limited’s Hong Kong IPO

Latham & Watkins represented the underwriters in the HK$5.46 billion (approximately US$700 million) initial public offering of Bank of Guizhou Company Limited (“Bank of Guizhou”) on the Main Board of The Stock Exchange of Hong Kong Limited.

The offering consists of 2,200,000,000 H shares (subject to the over-allotment option) sold at an offer price of HK$2.48 per H share. ABCI Securities Company Limited, CCB International Capital Limited and CLSA Limited acted as joint sponsors for the offering. 

Bank of Guizhou was established in 2012 as a result of the merger and restructuring of three city commercial banks in China’s Guizhou province and it is the only city commercial bank initiated by Guizhou provincial government. It had eight branches and 207 sub-branches as of 30 June 2019. Bank of Guizhou intends to use the proceeds from the offering to strengthen its capital base to support the sustainable growth of the business. 

Cathy Yeung, Global Vice Chair of Latham & Watkins’ Capital Markets Practice and Chair of the firm’s Greater China Practice, commented: “We are pleased to continue building on our expertise in advising financial institutions in their Hong Kong initial public offerings. We are also proud to have this transaction completed just before 2019 ends, in addition to the two other successful Hong Kong initial public offerings earlier in December.” 

The Latham & Watkins team was led by Hong Kong partners Cathy Yeung, Terris Tang and Allen Wang, with Hong Kong partner Dominik Sklenar, Hong Kong associates Wei Wei, George Zheng, Yan Zhang and Carson Wong, Beijing associates Fan Wang and Baihan Li.