China, Korea, Hong Kong and India struggle to create mega-IPOs
Screens showing surging stock shares at the Taiwan Stock Exchange office, following U.S. President Donald Trump’s surprise decision to pause the global tariffs, in Taipei, Taiwan, on April 10, 2025.
Daniel Ceng | Anadolu | Getty Images
Asia has no shortage of entrepreneurs, engineers or giant domestic markets. Yet when it comes to producing the kind of blockbuster listings seen in the U.S., the region continues to lag.
The challenge is not a lack of technological capability. Across China, India, South Korea and Japan, companies dominate industries ranging from semiconductors and electric vehicles to robotics and advanced manufacturing. The bigger question is whether Asia’s capital markets are structured to nurture firms into mega-cap public companies.
“Asia has the technological capability, scale, and talent base to support mega-IPOs, but capital markets remain constrained by structural and behavioral factors,” said Lenny Zéphirin, founder of the Zephirin Group.
Asia has produced large listings, but few on the scale of the U.S.’s biggest technology offerings.
Memory chipmaker ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) is planning a Shanghai IPO expected to raise at least 29.5 billion yuan ($4.3 billion), potentially the country’s largest since 2022, and Indian telco Jio Platforms is seeking a valuation of about $120 billion in its planned IPO.
In comparison, Space X debuted at a valuation of $1.77 trillion, even topping $2 trillion in its earliest days of trading.
A valuation premium has historically prompted some of Asia’s biggest technology companies to tap U.S. markets. Chinese internet giants Alibaba and JD.com both listed in New York to access deeper pools of international capital before later pursuing listings in Hong Kong.
A common theme emerges across the region: companies often face less patient private capital, stricter listing requirements and lower valuation multiples than their U.S. counterparts.
“The big driver in the U.S. has been a very large amount of private capital being available through private equity firms to carry these sorts of firms through to a stage where they come to market with a very, very high valuation,” said John Fildes, partner at Bain & Co.
The U.S. market also continues to reward technology companies with higher valuation multiples than Asian exchanges, echoed analysts.
China and Hong Kong: Technology isn’t the constraint
China arguably has the industrial base to produce companies comparable in scale to America’s largest technology firms. Leadership in artificial intelligence, semiconductors, robotics and advanced manufacturing demonstrates that innovation is not the primary bottleneck.
Instead, analysts point to the financial ecosystem.
“China certainly has the industrial capabilities, market scale and talent pool to create a mega-sized company,” said Wenjie Ding, investment strategist for global capital investment at China Asset Management.
China’s venture capital industry generally operates with shorter investment…
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