Like many Chinese investors, Su Qiaozhen, a manager at a Shanghai property firm, believes that investing in an initial public offering of a large company like PetroChina is a sure bet.
"Betting on new stocks is an easy way to make money, there is no risk," she said, after buying about 51,000 yuan (6,800 dollars) worth of PetroChina shares ahead of the oil firm's trading debut in Shanghai on Monday.
Su, 50, is one of thousands of investors who this week scrambled for a slice of the action ahead of PetroChina's 8.9-billion-dollar share sale, the world's largest this year.
The figure eclipses the record of China's top coal company, Shenhua Energy, which raised 66.58 billion yuan last month, while overtaking China Construction Bank's 7.7-billion-dollar listing in September.
Su wanted to get her hands on two million yuan worth of PetroChina shares, but demand in Asia's largest energy group was so huge that investors overbooked the issue by a record 440 billion dollars.
PetroChina is the latest in a raft of IPOs which, over the last nine months to September, saw Chinese firms raise a record 56.7 billion dollars on the nation's bourse, according to the latest available government figures.
The totals exceed the 56.5 billion dollars raised on Chinese mainland exchanges in the four years to 2006, according to the market watchdog, in a sharp turnaround for a stock market floundering at eight year lows in mid-2005.
As more investors have piled in, the key Shanghai Composite index has leaped some 120 percent this year after gaining around 130 percent last year, to create one of the biggest bull markets in history.
Among several moves to cool stock prices this year, regulators have encouraged strong Chinese firms to list on home markets in the hope they can improve the quality of listed companies and deflate prices.
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