The People's Insurance Company (Group) of China Limited (PICC Group), one of China's non-life insurers, is expected to file an IPO application to the securities regulator within the next few weeks.

"The timetable for the listing of the People's Insurance Group as a whole has been probably drawn up. If everything goes smooth, the A-share IPO prospectus is to be pre-disclosed in mid-July" according to people familiar with the matter,"PICC's A+H shares are expected to be synchronously listed around October."

The scale of the IPO financing like other huge IPOs of giant State-owned enterprises, undoubtedly, causes a lot of market concerns.

PICC Group is planning to go public at both the Hong Kong and Shanghai markets and hopes to raise around 30 billion yuan, according to the latest informed sources.

Though the Hong Kong Market will bite on a big trunk this time, which will ease the pressure for the domestic market." The fund-raising will focus on the H-share. A-share fund raising will account for only a small portion of the entire plan."

This might be an countermeasure towards the scale restrictions recently formulated by the mainland securities regulators who hope that the finance scale of super-large-cap stocks can be controlled within 5 billion yuan.

 

So far, a couple of super-large-cap stocks including Chiese express giant EMS are lining up before PICC for their initial public offering approval.

For PICC Group, replenishing its capital through issuing stocks is urgently needed.

"Sufficient funds must be quickly raised, especially in the rapidly- developed emerging business sectors."pointed out in an internal document of PICC Group.

Lack of solvency has been the biggest problem facing the group in recent years accompanied by its subsidiaries' high-speed expansion.

The group's insurance solvency level has been long ranging between 100% to 150%, which hardly meets the 150% solvency requirements brought up by CIRC( China Insurance Regulatory Committee)in its regulatory standards.