The H shares of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), the largest commercial bank in China, started trading in the Hong Kong stock exchange on Friday.

The bank closed its first day trading at 3.52 HK dollars, 14.6 percent higher than its initial public offering (IPO) price of 3.07 HK dollars, well meeting market expectations of a rise between 10 and 20 percent.

The shares opened at 3.60 HK dollars and fluctuated between 3.49 and 3.63 HK dollars during the day. Turnover of the shares reached 37.45 billion HK dollars, accounting almost half of the market's total.

"This is a milestone in our bank's development, and we are aiming to turn our bank into one that will provide best service and high economic returns," said Jiang Jianqing, chairman of the ICBC, at the launching ceremony here.

Boosted by the ICBC's strong debut, the Hong Kong Hang Seng Index rose 47 points, or 0.25 percent, to open at 18,400.81 on Friday, surpassing the previous record of 18,398 points scored in March 2000.

The index climbed to another new high of 18,465.5 points before closing the day's trade at 18,297.

The is the first Chinese enterprise to have issued the record-smashing IPO and have been listed simultaneously in Hong Kong and Shanghai bourses.

In Shanghai, the ICBC A shares opened at 3.4 yuan (0.43 U.S. dollars), 8.97 percent higher than its IPO price of 3.12 yuan (0.39 U.S. dollars).

Including the overallotment option, the ICBC raised 21.9 billion U.S. dollars through its IPO, far exceeding the previous record, an 18.4-billion-U.S.-dollar IPO by Japanese mobile phone company NTT DoCoMo Inc. in 1998.

In Hong Kong, retail investors ordered shares worth 423.7 billion HK dollars or 78 times more stock than was offered to them, outseating the Bank of China, which attracted 286 billion HK dollars in retail orders, as the most popular IPO in the Hong Kong history.

"ICBC has a strong base of clients and a powerful sales network and it is also a leader in all major banking businesses in China," said Jiang.

With more than 18,000 branches, 2.5 million corporate customers and 150 million individual clients, ICBC accounts for 15.4 percent of all loans extended in China.

By the end of last year, the ICBC had a total assets of 800 billion U.S. dollars, and generated 21.4 billion U.S. dollars of operation income.

The ICBC estimated that in 2006, the bank's net profits will be no less than 47.2 billion yuan ( about 6 billion U.S. dollars), with per-share net profits at 0.14 yuan (0.017 U.S. dollars).

The ICBC is the third of China's four big commercial banks to have listed in Hong Kong after the China Construction Bank, which came here last year, and Bank of China, which listed here in June and in Shanghai in July. Another big commercial bank is the Agricultural Bank of China.

Source: Xinhua