Nation's largest corporate bond sales kicked off
( 2002-10-15 16:52 ) (8 )

The Hong Kong-listed subsidiary of China Mobile Communications Corp. started Monday to sell 8 billion yuan (966 million US dollars) worth of corporate bonds.

The corporate bonds are reserved for domestic investors, and 5- 10 percent will be sold to individual investors, according to China Mobile (Hong Kong).

All the money to be raised will be used to buy network assets in eight provinces on the Chinese mainland. China Mobile is said to have the most number of mobile phone subscribers in the world.

Five billion yuan (600 million US dollars) in bonds will have a 15-year debt and carry an annual interest of 4.3-4.6 percent. The remaining 3 billion yuan (240 million US dollars) in bonds will have a five-year debt with an annual interest of 3.5-3.7 percent.

Tuesday's China Daily quoted a securities analyst as saying that the bonds would be quite attractive as against a persistently lackluster stock market at home.

In comparison with stocks, corporate bonds are believed to be more secured.

Wang Xiaochu, chairman and chief executive officer of China Mobile (Hong Kong), says the company received approval from the industry regulator to soon list the bonds on the domestic stock market.

He is confident of a warm welcome to the bonds, since his company holds 70 percent of the domestic mobile telecom market, according to the newspaper.

The paper also says that China's telecom carriers have been quite active in the capital market recently.

China Mobile's only rival, China Unicom, launched 5 billion A shares on the Shanghai Stock Exchange and raised 11.5 billion yuan (1.4 billion US dollars) on Oct. 9.