China Minsheng share sale: A sign of things to come?

In a sign of a warming investment climate, and in what many investors are no doubt hoping is a prelude to the resumption of IPOs on the mainland, China Minsheng Bank is planning to sell up to 3.32 billion new H-shares in Hong Kong. The lender is hoping the share sale will help it to shore up its capital base and find a strategic foreign investor to replace Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, Temasek Holdings, which sold its entire stake in the bank in March. Other banks have been busy, too, and in a way that will make Beijing happy. After months of haranguing from on high, it looks like the big four state-owned banks are finally increasing their lending to small and medium-sized enterprises. Meanwhile, Gome, the electronics retailer started by the long-detained Huang Guangyu will be getting money from another source: private equity firm Bain Capital. Bain will invest about US$300 million in Gome in a deal that would make it Gome’s second-largest shareholder. And Beijing is an investing mood in energy, continuing a streak of energy resource-for-loans deals with a US$3 billion agreement with Turkmenistan to expand that country’s South Yolotan natural gas field.