Hong Kong recorded more than HK$97 billion in proceeds from initial public offerings in early March, about ten times the sum raised during the comparable period in 2025, according to Morgan Stanley. The jump in early-year fundraising arrives even as the city’s main equity gauges have shown weakness so far this year.
Year-to-date performance for major indices has been mixed: the Hang Seng Index is down 1.6% while the Hang Seng Tech Index has fallen 8.3%. Despite those declines, trading activity has remained supportive of new listings, with average daily turnover reaching HK$273 billion year-to-date - a 9% increase relative to full-year 2025 levels.
Among underwriters, China International Capital Corporation - CICC - led the league table in early March. The firm sponsored 12 of 28 deals, accounting for 27% of funds raised, effectively maintaining the share it held throughout 2025. CICC’s sponsored transactions so far this year have concentrated on semiconductors, technology hardware and artificial intelligence-related businesses.
The average size of CICC-sponsored transactions stood at $560 million, a figure that is 26% larger than the market-wide average deal size. That disparity highlights a skew toward larger offerings among CICC’s mandates.
Onshore brokers dominate the broader IPO pipeline, which contains more than 380 prospective listings. CITIC tops the list with 103 sponsored deals in the pipeline, closely followed by CICC with 102. Huatai holds 59 sponsored deals. The distribution of pipeline activity underscores the central role that domestic underwriting houses continue to play in feeding new issuances to the Hong Kong capital markets.
Taken together, the data point to a market environment where elevated liquidity and concentrated underwriting activity are supporting a sizable jump in early-year IPO fundraising, even as headline indices register declines.