Gain for the mainland bourse
Ever since the Shanghai Stock Exchange was founded in 1990, the city has aspired to supplant Hong Kong as China's dominant capital market. Indeed, by the late 1990s, when share prices on the mainland soared, many argued that Hong Kong - then reeling from the Asian financial crisis - was in permanent decline.
Yet in the early years of this century, the mainland stock market crashed even as the Chinese economy went from strength to strength - share prices in Shanghai halved from 2001 to 2005. Big-name Chinese companies wanting to raise capital hurried to Hong Kong instead.
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The mainland stock market by then seemed mired in scandals, weighed down by the cumbersome structure of its listed companies and hindered by near-bankrupt brokerages. IPOs were halted for a year.
To make matters worse for China's commercial capital, the central government has for three months been running an investigation into corruption in the city that culminated last month with the detention of Shanghai's top official. Yet, just as layer on layer of Shanghai officialdom becomes ensnared in that process, the city's long-held goal has received an important boost. By launching its initial public offering simultaneously in Shanghai and Hong Kong, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China has delivered a huge vote of confidence.
"It shows that Shanghai is a much more serious market now," says Shifeng Ke, a director at Martin Currie Investment Management, one of the largest foreign investors in Chinese shares.
In ICBC's listing, while $16bn will be raised in Hong Kong, the $5.9bn tapped in Shanghai will shatter the local record set just this year by Bank of China, which listed there in the wake of its Hong Kong flotation. By conducting the offer in both centres at once, ICBC has demonstrated that the mainland exchange is no longer an afterthought. "There's no doubt that Shanghai is back in the game," says David Webb, an independent investor and non-executive director at Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing, which operates the territory's stock exchange. "Hong Kong will have to fight for its share of the pie."
The revival in fortunes has other remarkable aspects. The Shanghai composite index has risen 76 per cent since June 2005, touching a five-year high last week.Companies have raised a record $14bn this year - even though the IPO moratorium was lifted only in May.
The catalyst for the turnround was a reform plan, introduced by the government last year, that tackled opaque shareholder structures. Two-thirds of all shares in quoted companies were non-tradeable and owners of these so-called "state shares", almost always government entities, were thus not concerned about price performance. A generous compensation plan for owners of the existing tradeable shares, who feared their holdings might be diluted, managed to overcome any resistance.
Just over a year later, around 90 per cent of listed companies have completed the share transformation. Vincent Chan, head of China research at Credit Suisse First Boston, says the government has achieved in one year what he expected to take five to 10.
With confidence returning, it is expected that the Shanghai market will see a flood of listings. Some of the country's biggest and best-known companies - such as China Life, PetroChina and China Mobile - are listed only in Hong Kong. According to HSBC, eight such "returnee" companies will add Rmb4,000bn ($506bn, ￡271bn, �404bn) to mainland market capitalisation by 2008.
For the government, the listings represent the next stage of its strategy to boost the mainland's capital markets. But as Steven Sun at HSBC points out, it also solves a problem for the government, which has been under political pressure to let domestic investors buy into highly profitable companies whose shares are now available only in Hong Kong.
Yet for all the progress, Shanghai will not surpass Hong Kong any time soon. Shanghai has a much stronger base of institutional investors than it did in the late 1990s but is still heavily dependent on retail investors and thus vulnerable to volatile mood shifts. There are also still plenty of corporate governance problems that might undermine investor confidence and most listed companies remain controlled by the state - a further potential risk for minority shareholders.
Jing Ulrich, managing director for China equities at JPMorgan, says that if a Chinese company wants to raise large amounts of funds, Hong Kong is still a highly attractive exchange. "The ICBC deal is not a tipping point [in favour of Shanghai]," she says. "It is not a zero-sum game between the two markets."
上海股市阴转晴
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1990年成立上海证券交易所(SSE)以来，上海一直渴望取代香港，成为中国占主导地位的资本市场。实际上，在上世纪90年代末之前，内地股市节节上涨，当时有许多人宣称，香港（当时正遭受亚洲金融危机重创）将一直衰退下去。
然而，在本世纪的前几年，尽管中国经济越来越强大，内地股市却近乎崩溃――2001年至2005年，上海股市指数跌去一半。希望上市融资的内地知名企业转而纷纷涌向香港。
当时，内地股市似乎深陷泥潭，不仅各种丑闻层出不穷，而且也受到上市公司股权结构复杂、众多券商几近破产等问题的困扰。首次公开发行(IPO)被暂停一年之久。
令这个中国商业之都雪上加霜的是，中央政府已对它进行了长达3个月的反腐败调查，并随着上海最高级别官员在上个月被拘押而达到高潮。然而，就在上海各级官员纷纷落马之际，该市长久以来的目标却得到了一次重要的提振。中国工商银行(ICBC)在上海和香港市场同时进行IPO，无异给上海投下了一张巨大的信任票。
“它表明，上海现在已是一个更加值得重视的市场，”马丁可利投资管理公司(Martin Currie Investment Management)董事柯世丰表示。该公司是中国股票的最大外国投资者之一。
尽管工行在香港市场筹集140亿美元，但其在上海的融资规模也高达51亿美元，打破中国银行(BoC)今年刚刚创下的国内融资纪录。中国银行采取的是先在香港上市、后在上海上市的策略。而工行此次选择在两个金融中心同时发行上市，表明内地股市已不再是一个可有可无的选择。“上海无疑已经重新加入到竞争中来，”独立投资者兼香港交易及结算所有限公司(Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing)非执行董事戴维?韦伯(David Webb)表示。“香港将不得不争夺属于自己的那一块蛋糕。”香港交易及结算所有限公司是香港证交所的经营者。
上海的好运还有另外一个引人注目的方面。自2005年6月以来，上证综指已上涨76%，并于上周触及5年高点。尽管今年5月才解除IPO禁令，但各公司今年的融资额已达创纪录的140亿美元。（译者注：上证综指本周二突破1800点，再创5年新高。）
这种转变的推动力，源于中国政府去年推出的一个改革计划，着力解决上市公司不透明的股权结构。在中国上市公司的全部股份中，有三分之二属于非流通股，而这些所谓“国有股”的所有者（几乎都是政府实体），并不关心企业的股价表现。由于对现有流通股股东实施了慷慨的补偿，消除了他们对自己所持股份可能被稀释的担心，从而为这一改革计划排除了阻力。
股权分置改革仅仅推行一年多，就有约90%的上市公司完成了股改。瑞士信贷第一波士顿(CSFB)中国研究主管陈昌华(Vincent Chan)表示，中国政府一年内就完成了他预计5至10年才能完成的任务。
随着市场信心的回归，预计上海将迎来一波上市潮。中国一些规模最大、最知名的企业，如中国人寿(China Life)、中国石油(PetroChina)和中国移动(China Mobile)等，目前都只在香港上市。汇丰银行(HSBC)预计，2008年之前，8家此类企业的“回归”，将为中国内地股市增加4万亿元人民币(合5060亿美元)的市值。
对于中国政府而言，让这些企业返回内地上市，是其提振内地资本市场的下一步战略。而就像汇丰银行的史蒂芬?孙(Steven Sun)所指出的那样，这也为中国政府解决了一个问题。中国政府一直面临着政治压力，要求让国内投资者能够买入高盈利公司的股票，而这些公司如今仅在香港上市。
然而，仅仅取得这些成果，上海尚无法很快超越香港。尽管相对于上世纪90年代末，如今的上海拥有更加强大的机构投资者基础，但它依然严重依赖散户投资者，因此容易受到市场人气剧烈波动的影响。该市场仍存在大量公司治理问题，可能削弱投资者的信心；而多数上市公司依然处于政府的控制之下，对于小股东而言，这又是一个潜在的风险。
摩根大通(JPMorgan)中国证券市场部董事总经理李晶(Jing Ulrich)表示，如果一家中国企业希望筹集大量资金，香港仍是一个非常具有吸引力的选择。“工行的上市不是（有利于上海市场）的一个转折点，”她表示，“这不是两个市场之间的一场零和游戏。”
