The number
Initial public offerings, share placements and block trades in Hong Kong raised $47.5bn between July and September, the largest third-quarter haul the market has recorded, Bloomberg reported on Sunday. Chinese technology companies raising money to fund AI expansion drove the surge.
The year-to-date figure is now above $92bn, within reach of the annual record of $112.5bn set in 2021. Across Asia-Pacific, share sales reached about $120bn in the quarter — the region’s best in six years.
Where the money went
Alibaba’s $10.2bn follow-on offering was the single largest transaction of the quarter. Zhongji Innolight, which makes optical transceivers for data centres, raised close to $8bn in what the report describes as Hong Kong’s biggest listing in nearly seven years.
The AI model developer Z.AI has raised $9.6bn in Hong Kong this year across its listing, subsequent share placements and convertible bonds — more than the company’s entire initial offering, and a pattern the market has seen repeatedly as lock-up periods expire and companies return for more.
More than 85% of the Chinese AI companies that went public in 2026 — 23 of 27 — listed in Hong Kong, according to the report. That concentration is the story behind the headline number: the city has become the default venue for the sector, and the sector has become the city’s main source of volume.
The part that should give pause
Only two of Hong Kong’s ten largest deals since July are trading above their offer price. That is an unusual statistic to sit alongside a record quarter, and the bankers quoted in the report are candid about what it implies.
“Having large transactions trading through the offer price is not helpful for risk appetite,” said Martin Zoll of HSBC. James Wang of Goldman Sachs described the mechanism keeping volume high regardless: “People raise capital right out of lockup and tend to do so more frequently. This will continue for a couple of years.”
That is supply running ahead of demand. Companies are issuing because the window is open, not because the last round performed, and the buyers absorbing it are doing so at prices that have not held.
What to watch
Harish Raman of Citigroup told Bloomberg the bank expects more listings before the year-end, which would put the 2021 annual record in play. The more informative number will be how the fourth quarter’s deals trade a month after pricing. A record set on paper by issuers who keep coming back is a different thing from a market that is absorbing them.
