The stock traded as high as A$30.60 in Sydney. The shares were sold at A$22 apiece in an initial public offering that was enlarged to A$335.1 million ($223 million) from A$242.5 million. They’re heading for the biggest gain for an Australian IPO debut larger than $100 million since 2020, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Guzman y Gomez’s debut injects some activity in Australia’s market for new share sales, which has hosted only three IPOs topping $100 million over the past two years. It’s the nation’s biggest since chemical distributor Redox Ltd. nearly one year ago, Bloomberg-compiled data show.
“There are quite a few IPOs that have been in the pipeline, but because of low confidence,” investors have been hesitant, said Jun Bei Liu, a portfolio manager at Tribeca Investment Partners in Sydney. Guzman y Gomez’s debut performance may encourage IPOs slated for later this year to list sooner, she said.
Companies that started trading in the country over the past five years after IPOs that raised at least $100 million rose by an average 4.4% in their inaugural session, the data show.
Barrenjoey Markets Pty Ltd. and Morgan Stanley Australia Ltd. were joint lead managers in the offering.
(Bloomberg) — It started with a cryptic quote from President Xi Jinping buried in a 172-page book on the financial sector. Three months later, plans for potentially the biggest shift in years in how China conducts monetary policy are starting to surface.
Pan Gongsheng, governor of the People’s Bank of China, on Wednesday gave the clearest acknowledgment that the monetary authority is looking into trading government bonds in the secondary market as a way to regulate liquidity. The PBOC is studying the implementation with the finance ministry and it will be a gradual process, he said in a speech.
That responds to Xi’s directive to “enrich the monetary policy toolbox” and “gradually increase government bond buying and selling in central bank open market operation” in a speech during a financial policy meeting last year, made public only in the book published in March.
On top of that, Pan hinted at other changes to the interest-rate system. The bank may consider moving to using a single short-term rate to guide markets. It’s also considering narrowing the corridor within which market rates are allowed to fluctuate to signal a clearer policy target.
To be sure, all these moves aim to refine the technical tools that the PBOC uses to manage interest rates and money. They won’t necessarily help answer some of the big questions that confront Chinese policymakers right now — like whether credit can prop up the economy when households and companies aren’t eager to take on more debt, or how to ease borrowing costs without weakening the yuan. Many details remain vague, along with the timeline for change.
PBOC watchers see the proposals as part of a long-running effort in which the central bank ultimately seeks to guide market interest rates rather than setting them directly — and a step further away from the command economy where officials determined both the price and the quantity of credit. Pan said on Wednesday that it’s time to pay less attention to targets like the pace of loan growth because borrowing by real estate developers and local governments is in decline as part of the economy’s transition.
“Moving to one short-term interest rate that is connected to the financial market as the main policy rate would be an obvious further step in the gradual reform of China’s monetary policy framework,” said Louis Kuijs, chief Asia-Pacific economist for S&P Global Ratings. “It would make the framework simpler and more transparent, and bring it closer to the ‘industry standard’ as practiced in most advanced economies.”
SYDNEY (Reuters) – A bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) launched on Australia’s main stock market for the first time on Thursday as fund managers debut products to satisfy investors returning to cryptocurrency markets following a boom in prices.
The VanEck Bitcoin ETF launched with around A$990,000 ($660,429) in assets on the Australian Securities Exchange and is the culmination of over three years of negotiations with operator ASX.
The fund will not own bitcoin directly, but invest in the U.S.-listed VanEck Bitcoin Trust, which launched in January. VanEck’s European subsidiary also manages 12 similar cryptocurrency funds.
Investors have poured billions of dollars into cryptocurrency ETFs in the U.S. after regulators approved several products in January. Hong Kong followed in April with the launch of six funds, although interest there has been more muted.
VanEck Australia said in March the greenlight from U.S. regulators triggered a jump in requests from brokers and financial advisers for similar products.
The price of bitcoin has almost tripled since 2023, although prices have stalled since a peak in March.
A competitor exchange in Australia run by the local subsidiary of CBOE Global Markets already hosts several bitcoin ETFs.
However, the VanEck Bitcoin ETF is the first fund to launch on the main exchange, where it will share the tickertape with some of the country’s most well-known corporations such as BHP and Commonwealth Bank.
