Tencent Share Placement Is So Big It Ranks Among Largest HK IPOs

(Bloomberg) -- Naspers Ltd.’s $10.6 billion sale of Tencent Holdings Ltd. shares is so big that, if carried through, it would compare with the largest initial public offerings in Hong Kong history.

No other secondary stock placement has ever come close to that amount, data compiled by Bloomberg show. The only share sales that crossed the $10 billion mark were the initial public offerings of AIA Group Ltd. in 2010 and those of three Chinese lenders -- Agricultural Bank of China Ltd., also in 2010, and Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd. and Bank of China Ltd. four years earlier.

Naspers said on Thursday it would cash in on its Tencent stake, a firm it first invested in back in 2001. The South African media company is offering as many as 190 million shares in the Chinese technology giant, according to a term sheet obtained by Bloomberg News. That represents about 2 percent of Tencent’s outstanding stock.

In an unusual move, the deal’s bookrunners -- Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc. and Morgan Stanley -- did not set a price range in the initial term sheet. Instead, the document says: “guidance to follow.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Fox Hu in Hong Kong at fhu7@bloomberg.net, Crystal Tse in Hong Kong at ctse44@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Divya Balji at dbalji1@bloomberg.net, Cecile Vannucci

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