Chinese rail giant to do max $1.8 bn share sale

Bloomberg reports CRRC Corp., China’s only maker of high-speed locomotives, plans to raise as much as 12 billion yuan ($1.8 billion) in a private share sale in Shanghai to repay debt and to help finance its daily operations. The company’s board has approved the sale of as many as 1.39 billion yuan-denominated A shares at 8.66 yuan apiece, CRRC said. That’s a 4.8% discount to the last close. Controlling stakeholder CRRC Group plans to buy about 692 million shares in the placement. The Chinese government combined former trainmakers CSR Corp. and China CNR Corp. last year to form CRRC, in a bid to better compete with Germany’s Siemens AG and France’s Alstom SA.