US food giant Archer Daniels Midland will invest up to 200 million US dollars at Agricultural Bank of China's upcoming share sale, a report said Tuesday, in what could be the world's largest initial public offering.
The purchase would put the US company among several other major investors at the massive IPO next month, including the sovereign investment funds of Qatar and Kuwait, Britain's Standard Chartered bank and two Hong Kong tycoons, Dow Jones Newswires said, citing unnamed sources.
The Qatar Investment Authority is set to be the single biggest investor as it plans to buy 2.8 billion US dollars worth of shares, Dow Jones said.
The Kuwait Investment Authority will invest between 500 million and one billion US dollars in the sale.
Archer Daniels Midland will buy between 100 million and 200 million US dollars worth of AgBank shares.
ADM is one of the world's biggest food companies and produces goods ranging from cotton seed and peanuts to ethanol and animal feed.
AgBank — the last of China's big four lenders to list — plans to float its shares in Hong Kong and Shanghai next month.
Recent estimates of the size of the offering have ranged from about 19 billion US dollars to about 28 billion US dollars.
But there has been speculation that the size of the sale could be smaller than anticipated due to weak market sentiment and concerns about the profitability of its operations. The bank was initially expected to raise about 30 billion dollars.
The world's biggest IPO so far is the 22-billion-dollar offering of Industrial and Commercial Bank of China in 2006.
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