Chinese tech giants capitalize on the US IPO market

Online brokers, including the Xiaomi-backed Up Fintech Holding (also known as Tiger Brokers) and Tencent’s Futu Holdings, have been involved in almost every successful overseas share sale of Chinese firms in the past year. These include Chinese EV makers Xpeng’s US$1.5 billion US IPO and Li Auto’s US$1.1 billion US listing.

Tiger has helped 26 Chinese firms with their US listing while Futu has been involved in half of that amount. In total, the two have enabled 36 new economy firms to go public on the US stock market amid tension between China and the US.

According to XPeng vice chairman Brian Gu, online brokers provide services such as trading, employee stock plans, and creative public campaign initiatives, which global banks are unable or unwilling to offer.

“The rise of China’s new economy is a long-term and clear trend that will fuel the making of a global Chinese bank. It will also have room for online brokers like us that play a more laid-back and complementary role behind big banks,” Up Fintech CEO Wu Tianhua told Bloomberg.

Given the bumper years, however, online brokers’ deal value still represents a small part of the whole market, compared to those of the biggest banks.

Additionally, Xiaomi, along with 10 other Chinese companies, are recently added to a blacklist drawn up by the Trump administration, which prevents US investors from buying securities from any of these firms.