China Everbright Bank prices Hong Kong share offer at HK$3.98
HONG KONG, Dec 13 (Reuters) - China Everbright Bank Co Ltd has priced a Hong Kong share offer at HK$3.98 per share, near the bottom of the marketing range, raising $3 billion after the mid-sized lender decided to exercise an option on the deal, sources said late on Friday.
The lending arm of state-backed China Everbright Group had set the marketing range at HK$3.83 to HK$4.27 per Hong Kong-traded share, in its third effort to list in Hong Kong after previous attempts faltered on poor demand amid volatile markets.
Shanghai-listed China Everbright Bank exercised an option to sell an additional 762 million shares on top of the base size of 5.08 billion shares, putting the total deal at HK$23.25 billion ($3.0 billion).
China's 11th biggest bank by market capitalisation is raising money to bolster its capital as bad debt picks up on the back of a slowing economy.
The deal would be Hong Kong's biggest share sale since China Petroleum & Chemical Corp (Sinopec) , Asia's largest refiner, raised $3.1 billion in February.
China Everbright Bank had received commitments worth $1.74 billion from 19 cornerstone investors including China Shipping (Group) Co and Prudential Financial Inc, according to its prospectus released on Monday.
