Ping An Insurance is planning to raise about $22 billion to fund its foreign acquisition plan, reports the Financial Times.
According to media reports, the company plans to raise the money through initial public offerings and as part of the plan it will issue 1.2 billion new shares to public and institutional investors in a secondary placement. The company also plans to sell up to $5.7 billion of six-year convertible bonds with detachable warrants, thereby diluting existing shareholders’ stakes.
The company said that the money raised from the fund would be used only for the company’s expansion strategies that are compatible with its insurance, banking and asset management activities.
According to the Financial Times, Steven Sun, Asia-Pacific equity strategist at HSBC, said: The financial sector in the US and Europe has been depressed for a while now and this presents a buying opportunity for Chinese firms like Ping An. Domestically I can’t see what sort of target they could buy besides a couple of medium-sized banks.