SBI Shinsei Bank surged as much as 16% in its trading debut in Tokyo on Wednesday after raising ?322 billion ($2.1 billion) in Japan¡¯s second-biggest initial public offering of the year.
It traded as high as ?1,680, after the sale saw the shares priced at ?1,450 per share, the upper end of the bookbuilding range. The IPO gave the lender a market value of ?1.3 trillion.
¡°The stock price is at about the fair value compared with other banks,¡± said Hiroaki Tomori, an executive fund manager at Mitsubishi UFJ Asset Management. ¡°Whether synergies of SBI group is achieved will be in focus going forward.¡±
The IPO was 10 times oversubscribed, according to Nomura Holdings, one of the lead arranges of the deal. Demand from global institutional investors was about 10 times, while retail buyers sought 10 times the number of shares allocated to them, with demand from local institutional investors being in the ¡°high single digits.¡±
Norinchukin Bank and KKR & Co. were among the subscribers, while global investors including Qatar Investment Authority, M&G Investment Management and BlackRock also showed interest in buying a stake.
The size only trails JX Advanced Metals¡¯ offering earlier this year, which raised the biggest proceeds since 2018.
The lender¡¯s listing boosted the total volume in Japan¡¯s IPO market to a seven-year high that has raised ?1.3 trillion in proceeds in the year to date.
Nomura Holdings, SBI Holdings, Mizuho Financial Group, Goldman Sachs Group, SMBC Nikko Securities and Bank of America are the joint global coordinators.
SBI Shinsei traces its roots to Long-Term Credit Bank of Japan, which was nationalized in 1998 during the country¡¯s banking crisis. It was later sold to investors including Ripplewood Holdings and financier J. Christopher Flowers, who rebranded it and took it public in 2004. Until early 2025, it remained the only major Japanese bank that hadn¡¯t repaid its government bailout.
The bank¡¯s relisting also highlighted risks of SBI Shinsei as hedge funds including Citadel filed a petition with the Tokyo District Court, claiming that SBI Holdings¡¯ buyout of SBI Shinsei at ?2,800 a share was undervalued. The bank may be ordered to pay the difference from a court-determined fair price.
The stock¡¯s prospectus showed that Aya Nomura, one of the country¡¯s most prominent activist investors, may get a ?10 billion windfall upon the lender¡¯s listing under certain conditions. The document revealed that Aya Nomura and S-Grant Corporation, a fund affiliated with activist investors Yoshiaki Murakami, the father of Aya Nomura, sold SBI Shinsei shares at a price higher than the price offered to minority investors in the privatization deal.
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