stlplaceLast Updated on December 2, 2007 by stlplace
Screen shot Capital Week published on Dec. 1, 2007
Anthony Bolton is the legendary fund manager for Fidelity (the mutual fund company Peter Lynch made his name). He visited China lately and answered investing questions from reporter of Capital Weekly.
Last Updated on December 13, 2007 by stlplace
First a little background. Longtop did its high profile IPO on Oct. 24, a short month ago at NYSE (think how much market sentiment has changed since then). As the first Chinese software company listed in NYSE, Longtop is in the sweet spot in terms of the customers they serve: the Chinese banks. Chinese banks, both the big 4 and the (smaller) city commercial banks, have lots of money to spend lately, after raising tons of cash through IPO in recent years.
On the serious side, the banks do need to improve the workflow and upgrade their IT system, so that their customers don’t have to wait one hour for over the counter service, or wait half an hour for ATM machine. The banks are also targeting the newly minted middle class for personal banking, credit card and other services. After all, it IS a competitive environment. China opened up RMB services to foreign banks early this year. If people can not get the services at domestic banks, they may go to foreign banks.
Here are two common questions for Longtop.
1) The usage of the IPO proceeds.
According to its F1 prospectus, the company plan to use the net proceeds of this offering as follows: