China's Bank Confirms World's Biggest IPO

The bank, which first went public on the Shanghai and Hong Kong exchanges mid-July, had found investors for all its shares counting additional so-called greenshoe options, Chinese state media said.

A greenshoe option consists of extra shares made accessible to meet high demand for a new issue to stabilize the stock price in the early stages of trading.

The preceding record for an IPO was held by the formerly state-owned Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Ltd, which Beijing floated for 21.9 billion dollars in 2006.

The first share issues of the Agricultural Bank of China may have been supported by state-controlled investors to alleviate their price in a turbulent market, according to the Financial Times newspaper.

An unusually early listing in the Shanghai Index may also have supported the stock's price, analysts said, by convincing fund managers to spend in order to keep their portfolios in line with the index.

The bank was the last of the four main state banks to be privatized, ending a decade of reformation of the financial sector by the Chinese government.