Shanghai, April 23:

China CITIC Bank has raised $5.4 billion in a share sale in Shanghai and Hong Kong, marking the world’s biggest initial public offering so far this year, according to figures issued on Monday.

The bank, ranked seventh in China, priced its shares at the top end of an indicative range due to strong demand from investors, it said in a statement to the Shanghai Stock Exchange. The mid-sized lender, scheduled to debut on Friday, priced 2.3 billion A shares to be listed in Shanghai at 5.80 yuan (80 US cents) each, it said.

It also sold 4.9 billion H-shares to be listed in Hong Kong at an equivalent of 5.86 Hong Kong dollars (71 US cents).

The share sale is the second simultaneous listing in Shanghai and Hong Kong after China’s largest bank Industrial and Commercial Bank of China raised $21.9 billion last year, which was the world’s largest ever. Regulators have pushed for the nation’s lenders to reform themselves and become joint stock holding companies over the last three years as a way of shoring up their books and clearing debt-weakened balance sheets.

CITIC Bank will be the sixth mainland lender to list in Hong Kong since Bank of Communications pioneered in 2005 while smaller banks such as Chongqing Commercial Bank are looking to the Shanghai bourse. Citic Bank is the domestic banking arm of China’s Citic Group, a financial conglomerate set up in late 1970s. It recorded a net profit of 3.73 billion yuan in 2006, up 14 per cent.