Worried it could become the latest victim of the dangerous IPO market, women's apparel company E-Land Fashion China Holdings postponed its listing yesterday.

A spinoff of Korean retail conglomerate E-land World Ltd, E-Land Fashion's offering had been fully covered. Still, sources close to the situation said the company shelved the deal, in hopes of a better valuation.

Women's apparel company E-land has put its IPO on hold in hopes of receiving a better valuation later. Bloomberg

It had planned to sell 496 million shares at between HK$3.80 and HK$5.80 each, which would have brought in up to HK$2.8 billion.

Also, the deal was tainted by the protests of fired employees of E-land World who accused the company of being in violation of labor laws and then urged investors not to subscribe to shares of E-Land.

CASH Asset Management Associate Director Patrick Yiu said the negative news and pessimistic climate may be partly to blame for the IPO setback.

"Investors have lost their confidence to the primary market," Yiu said. "They prefer to invest in heavyweight State-owned shares."

Owing to the bearish market sentiment, Artini China set its global offer price at $2.22, the low end of the indicated price range.

Based on the IPO price, Artini looks to raise $621.6 million from the share offering.

Furthermore, market sources said that the IPO deal of Asia Cement (China) Holdings was four times oversubscribed for its retail tranche.

The margin application of the deal is tepid, with five securities houses issuing HK$65 million in margin financing.

A spokesperson of Philip Securities said that investors are very cautious about applying margin lending.

"Although the background of Asia Cement is relatively attractive among the three IPO newcomers, it drew indifferent reactions from investors," the spokesperson said. "Many of them prefer to subscribe the shares in cash rather than making use of margin financing on fears that the share surge fails to cover the (loans') interest payments."

Asia Cement aims to collect up to HK$2.42 billion by issuing 375 million shares at between HK$4.85 and HK$6.45 each.

The shares will begin to trade on the Hong Kong exchange May 20.

Asia Cement is one of the three largest cement makers in the Yangtze River region and the southwest region.

The company is expected to use more than half of its net proceeds to expand, 22 percent for acquisitions and 17 percent to repay loans.

(HK Edition 05/09/2008 page2)