SINGAPORE, July 5 (Reuters) – A burst of corporate
acquisition activity in Asia shows that executives throughout
the region are gaining confidence in their financial outlook
and expansion strategy, with cross-border deals on the upswing.

Asia Pacific M&A, excluding Japan, rose 78 percent last
quarter, according to Thomson Reuters, with emerging market
acquisitions now one-third of total deal volume.

SHANGHAI/HONG KONG, July 1 (Reuters) – Agricultural Bank of
China’s [ABC.UL] Hong Kong share offering has been more than 10
times oversubscribed by institutional investors, signalling
their healthy interest in the dual-market listing that could
end up being the world’s largest ever.

AgBank, whose Shanghai-Hong Kong listing aims to raise more
than $20 billion, has received bids from institutional
investors worth around $50 billion for its Hong Kong offering,
a source with direct knowledge of the situation told Reuters on
Thursday.

HONG KONG (Reuters) – Agricultural Bank of China plans to raise up to $11.4 billion in the Hong Kong leg of its dual-exchange IPO, sources close to the deal said, but its total offering, including a Shanghai listing, may fall short of the record set by Industrial and Commercial Bank of China.

AgBank, which is kicking off a formal marketing roadshow, set a proposed price range of HK$2.88-HK$3.48 a share for the Hong Kong offering, said the sources who are directly involved with the deal but cannot be named as the information is not yet public. AgBank could not be reached for comment.

HONG KONG (Reuters) – Agricultural Bank of China Ltd plans to raise as much as $11.4 billion through the Hong Kong portion of its initial public offering, sources close to the deal said, setting a price range that keeps the lender on track for the largest IPO on record.

AgBank, which kicks off a formal marketing roadshow on Thursday, set a proposed price range of HK$2.88-HK$3.48 a share for the Hong Kong offering, the sources said late on Wednesday.

BEIJING/HONG KONG (Reuters) – Four years ago, Pan Gongsheng was board secretary at Industrial and Commercial Bank of China and steered what is now the world’s most valuable bank through its $21.9 billion IPO, the largest ever.

His style then was to subject the army of bankers piecing the deal together to a strict regimen of daily report cards, grading everything from attendance to typing errors in the offer prospectus – all of which were reported back to government officials in Beijing.

HONG KONG (Reuters) – The Kuwait Investment Authority has invested $800 million in Agricultural Bank of China, two sources said on Monday, giving Middle East funds a big slice of AgBank’s likely record $23 billion IPO.

The same sources confirmed a weekend report that the Qatar Investment Authority agreed to invest $2.8 billion in AgBank, a bigger-than-expected sum that gets underwriters closer to their goal of raising around $6 billion through cornerstone investors in the planned Hong Kong offering.

HONG KONG (Reuters) – Agricultural Bank of China ABC.UL has received an $800 million investment from the Kuwait Investment Authority, sources said on Monday, in a deal that means Middle East funds will take up more than half of Hong Kong’s cornerstone portion of AgBank’s $23 billion IPO.

The sources confirmed a report issued late on Sunday that the Qatar Investment Authority had agreed to invest $2.8 billion in AgBank, a greater-than-expected amount that gets underwriters closer to its goal of raising around $6 billion through cornerstone investors.

HONG KONG (Reuters) – Two Middle East wealth funds may each buy $1 billion worth of stock in Agricultural Bank of China’s upcoming record IPO, among seven key investors considering buying stakes, sources said on Friday.

AgBank, with assets of $1.4 trillion — more than the GDP of Canada — had hoped to raise around $30 billion from its dual listing in Hong Kong and Shanghai as it looks to shore up its capital base after a lending splurge by Chinese banks last year.

HONG KONG, June 18 (Reuters) – Agricultural Bank of China has
reached an agreement with a group of seven investors ahead of its
massive initial public offering, sources said on Friday, with two
funds from the Middle East considering a stake that could exceed
$2 billion.

The agreements are a key step for the state-owned lender, as
the more money it can collar before the Shanghai-Hong Kong
listing, the easier it will be to raise its record-setting goal.

HONG KONG (Reuters) – The Agricultural Bank of China is seeking to raise more than $23 billion through a dual Hong Kong and Shanghai listing, according to documents on Monday, putting it on course for the world’s biggest IPO.

The initial public offering by AgBank, founded by Mao Zedong in the 1950s as the central bank’s rural arm, had previously been touted as high as $30 billion, but has been scaled back as China’s stock markets have dropped by more than a fifth this year and global markets have been spooked by a euro zone debt crisis.