(MENAFN- AFP) Shares in mainland lender China Everbright Bank fell almost three percent on its Hong Kong trading debut on Friday after raising $3 billion in the city's biggest initial public offering of the year.
The Beijing-based bank, a mid-sized lender closed at HK$3.87 on the Hong Kong exchange, down 2.76 percent from its IPO pice of HK$3.98. The benchmark Hang Sang Index fell 0.33 percent.
Analysts said the debut was hurt by a lack of enthusiasm for Chinese banks being listed in the Asian financial hub.
"It is the twelfth Chinese bank to be listed in Hong Kong, it's not something new anymore," Tanrich Securities vice president Jackson Wong told AFP.
"Everbright Bank wasn't something that everyone was expecting to have a blockbuster debut, even though it is the biggest listing," Wong said, adding that two other mainland Chinese banks that listed during the year failed to make gains on their debuts.
Everbright raised $2.6 billion earlier this month by offloading 5.08 billion shares and topped that up with the sale of an additional 762 million shares last Friday.
The Hong Kong listing has come about at the third attempt for the bank. It first raised the possibility of an IPO in the city in 2011, with a plan to raise as much as $6 billion, but later scrapped it due to weakness in the domestic and global economies.
It revived the listing plan in May of last year, scaling back the size to around $1.4 billion, but again postponed it because of weak market conditions.
Hong Kong was the world's top IPO venue from 2009 to 2011, but fallen away in recent years, with Chinese companies growing worried about slowing economic growth on the mainland.
Everbright's IPO overtook the $2.5 billion raised by China Cinda, a state-owned debts management firm and the first of its kind to list in the city, earlier this month. However, Cinda shares surged almost 30 percent on its debut last Thursday.
-- Dow Jones Newswires contributed to this story --
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