HONG KONG â€" China Everbright Bank is hoping the third time will be the charm.
On Tuesday, the midsize Chinese state-owned lender began marketing a Hong Kong share sale that is seeking to raise as much as $2.8 billion to help shore up its capital base.
If successful, the deal would be Hong Kong’s biggest initial public offering of the year, overtaking that of China Cinda Asset Management, a state-run ‘‘bad bank’’ that raised $2.5 billion in its share sale last week.
It is Everbright Bank’s third try for a Hong Kong listing. It aborted two previous attempts â€" most recently in August 2012 â€" because of market downturns.
It also comes at a time when the bank’s parent group has been in the news for being one of the Chinese companies whose business dealings with JPMorgan Chase have been the subject of a United States bribery investigation for months.
The United States authorities are investigating whether JPMorgan’s ‘‘Sons and Daughters’’ program of hiring the children of executives at Chinese state companies was directly linked to winning business from those companies. JPMorgan employed the son of the chairman of the China Everbright Group, and a Hong Kong executive at the Wall Street bank highlighted in emails how hiring decisions could affect ‘‘existing and potential business opportunities.’’
Last month, JPMorgan withdrew as one of the underwriters of the Everbright Bank I.P.O., The Wall Street Journal reported at the time. Everbright Bank’s 711-page listing document, published on Tuesday, does not mention JPMorgan or the investigation in the United States.
Everbright Bank plans to sell 5.1 billion new shares at a price range of 3.83 Hong Kong dollars to 4.27 Hong Kong dollars â€" raising 19.5 billion dollars to 21.7 billion dollars, or $2.5 billion to $2.8 billion, it said Tuesday. The deal is expected to price on Friday and trading in the stock to begin on Dec. 20.
Everbright Bank is the third Chinese bank since October to seek a Hong Kong listing. Huishang Bank Corporation, a regional banking group based in eastern Anhui Province, raised about $1.2 billion in a Hong Kong I.P.O. in November, and Bank of Chongqing raised about $540 million in October.
Despite their generally healthy growth in profits, Chinese banks are being compelled to raise money and secure new access to capital markets ahead of what analysts expect could be a rising tide of new bad debt in China, as economic growth slows from the double-digit pace of previous decades.
The banks also need to bolster their capital bases ahead of more stringent capital requirements, which are being phased in by Chinese financial regulators between now and 2018. Everbright Bank’s capital adequacy ratio stood at 9.67 percent as of June, but must reach 10.5 percent in the next five years to comply with the new regulations.
Everbright Bank is no stranger to large-scale fund-raising. In 2007 it received a capital injection worth 20 billion renminbi, or $3.3 billion at the exchange rates of today, from the government. In 2009, the bank sold stakes to eight outside investors, raising 11.5 billion renminbi. And in 2010, it raised 21.7 billion renminbi in a Shanghai I.P.O.
In its listing document, Everbright Bank said it planned to use the proceeds from the Hong Kong offering ‘‘to supplement our core capital base, to increase capital adequacy, to strengthen our ability to resist risks as well as to strengthen our profitability and to support growth of our business.’’
The I.P.O. has received strong support from so-called cornerstone investors, big investment institutions or wealthy individuals who commit in advance to buying large blocks of shares and holding them for six months.
Everbright Bank’s 19 cornerstone investors have pledged to buy shares worth $1.74 billion, or as much as 70 percent of the stock being sold in the I.P.O. depending on the deal’s final pricing. They include China Shipping Group, the Hong Kong property developer Chinese Estates Holdings, Prudential Insurance and the Canadian insurer Sun Life Assurance.
The I.P.O. has 10 underwriters, led by China International Capital Corporation, UBS, Morgan Stanley and China Everbright Securities International.
