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FWD files to list in Hong Kong, as Richard Li completes the switch of his insurer’s stock sale from New York
- FWD may trim its Hong Kong fundraising to US$1 billion, from the US$3 billion planned for New York last year
- Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, CMBI and JP Morgan are helping the company with the planned shares offering
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FWD Group, the Hong Kong-based insurer backed by tycoon Richard Li Tzar-kai, filed a draft prospectus to list its shares on the city’s exchange, as it pressed on with switching its initial public offering from New York to its hometown bourse.
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FWD, which ranked within the top three insurers in Thailand and the Philippines, has now taken a step closer to a Hong Kong share sale.
It usually takes at least six months for a new issuer to obtain all the approvals and clearance from Hong Kong’s exchange before an IPO kicks off.
FWD had aimed to raise as much as US$3 billion in New York last September, which would have valued the group at US$13 billion, people familiar said in August. Bloomberg reported earlier Monday that the deal size could now be trimmed to US$1 billion.
Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, CMBI and JP Morgan are helping the company with the planned shares offering.
The city’s IPO market is going through a dry spell in the first two months of this year, where issuers either have had to postpone deals, or settle for lower valuations as uncertainties stemming from the war in Ukraine, a surge of Omicron cases in Hong Kong and China’s new rules for offshore listings have curbed investors’ appetite for new shares.
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