Wall Street banks have earned hundreds of millions in fees from Chinese groups selling shares in New York and Hong Kong in 2020, illustrating the fee pool that is at stake as Washington threatens to delist these companies from US markets.
American bank fees from initial public offerings, follow-on share sales and convertible bonds issued by Chinese companies including the likes of retailer JD.com and tech group NetEase are up about 24 per cent from a year ago at $414m, according to data from Refinitiv. They accounted for 43 per cent of the total fee pool of $958.9m, just ahead of US banks’ market share a year ago.
Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs topped the list, bringing in $151m and $74m so far this year, respectively. The pair served as underwriters in July for the $1.5bn Nasdaq IPO of Li Auto, a Chinese electric vehicle start-up. Both are also underwriting this week’s $1.9bn flotation on the Nasdaq of Chinese housing platform KE Holdings. The two banks declined to comment.