New regulations hit China in global tech, media & telecom IPO market

New Delhi, Feb 16 Regulatory crackdown in China shrunk the country's share in the global tech, media and Telecom (TMT) IPO market by 9 per cent last year, a new report showed on Wednesday.

China's regulatory onslaught has negatively impacted the tech TMT IPO market as the regulators created headwinds for companies wanting to go public in the country.

Newly imposed rules require Chinese companies to comply with a set of national laws and regulations and to ensure data security.

ByteDance, for instance, had to postpone its listing plans after the regulators asked the company to focus on data security risks.

As a result, the share of TMT listings on Chinese exchanges in the total IPO proceeds raised worldwide year-on-year fell sharply from 24 per cent to 15 per cent, reveals data and analytics company GlobalData.

"Stricter cybersecurity regulations on both domestic and overseas listings, as well as bans on Chinese companies raising funds from foreign investors have discouraged numerous Chinese TMT players from going public. This led to a weak IPO market in 2021," said Swati Verma, associate project manager of thematic research at GlobalData.

Last year was the strongest year for TMT IPOs since 2018 at a global level. The number of IPOs increased across all the geographies, except in China.

According to GlobalData, the number of TMT IPOs in China year-on-year fell by 34 per cent in 2021.

The Chinese authorities have banned the private educational institutes from raising money through stock listings and barred any foreign capital investment in this sector.

Moreover, the sudden and unexpected halt of Ant Group's IPO in November 2020 is still impacting sentiment in fintech.

"The regulatory crackdown has created real uncertainty in the Chinese IPO market and GlobalData expects the trend to persist in 2022 as well," said the report.

Established themes saw the most successful IPOs between 2018 and 2021, with ecommerce the strongest theme followed by mobile, fintech, and cloud.

There were 72 per cent more TMT IPOs in 2021 compared to 2020 and the total proceeds of TMT IPOs were nearly 2.5 times higher in 2021 than the previous year.