China’s stock markets might be volatile and its economy weakening, but policymakers are nevertheless mulling measures to improve the pricing of initial public offerings and further open the country’s capital markets to foreign investors.
The grim market conditions have certainly not dampened enthusiasm among would-be issuers. Domestic exchanges have been inundated with as many as 690 companies vying to launch IPOs, though very few have actually succeeded in launching sizeable deals so far and overall volumes are down considerably.
Chinese companies raised a total of Rmb59 billion $9.3 billion from IPOs in the A-share market during the first five months of this year a fraction...