Asia absorbs more than half of IPO funding in 2018: OECD report

SEOUL, Dec. 8 (Yonhap) -- Asia is rapidly growing rapidly as more than half of all equity capital raised through initial public offerings (IPOs) went to Asian companies in 2018, according to a recent OECD report.

"Households outside of Asia have increased their investments in Asian companies through pension funds, mutual funds and other intermediaries. Smaller growth companies from Asia are using capital markets to raise money more extensively than smaller firms from the rest of the world," the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said in its latest equity market review.

Asian nonfinancial companies raised an average of US$67 billion a year during the last decade, surpassing the combined amount of equity raised by companies from Europe and the United States, according to the OECD Equity Market Review of Asia 2019.

The development in Asia is mainly due to a sharp increase in the number of Chinese companies that opted to raise capital through IPOs. As a result, more than half of the world's listed companies are from Asia, the report said.

China led IPOs by Asian companies. However, South Korea, India and Japan also ranked among the top 10 economies when it comes to the number of new stock market listings, it said.

"Continued strong IPO activity in Asia and an increasing weight of Asian companies in the global stock market indices would further increase the size of foreign equity portfolio investments in Asia," the report said.

kyongae.choi@yna.co.kr
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