Chinese stocks hit seven-year high despite rush of IPOs

Chinese stocks rose to fresh seven-year highs on Friday, shrugging off concerns that a wave of new share offerings would reduce liquidity.

China’s securities regulator said late on Thursday it had approved 30 initial public offerings (IPOs), which analysts said could lock up as much as 3.7 trillion yuan (€549 billion) in subscription funds over the next two weeks. But the market appears to have ample liquidity to cope with that.

Around one trillion yuan of fresh funds flowed into the stock market in the first quarter of this year, the official Securities Times reported on Friday. State media also reported that in just three days, the asset management arm of Orient Securities raised over 10 billion yuan (€1.48 billion) in an equity-focused product that is the biggest launched since 2012.

The CSI300 index of the largest listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen rose 1.1 per cent to 4,170.54, while the Shanghai Composite Index gained 1.0 per cent to 3,863.93.