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Surge in Chinese listings drives boom for US small-cap IPO market

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Surge in Chinese listings drives boom for US small-cap IPO market

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The volatile market for small US initial public offerings is “booming” thanks to a surge of Chinese listings on New York’s Nasdaq as companies race to beat a rule change that blocks the smallest deals.

The surge in listings kicked off late last year with 42 small offerings in the last three months of 2024, followed by 41 in the first quarter of this year — the two busiest quarters in records back 15 years, according to equity capital markets group Capital Markets Gateway (CMG). This was up from 20 in the second quarter of 2024 and 29 in the third.

Fifty-three of the past two quarter’s listings were from China and Hong Kong, with only 18 from the US, and all but nine on Nasdaq. CMG’s data excludes special purpose acquisition vehicles, which raise money in order to take over a private business.

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“The microcap IPO market is booming,” said Matthew Kennedy, a senior strategist at Renaissance Capital, citing small Chinese companies in sectors from pharmaceuticals to construction. “It’s a highly speculative area,” he said, with many investors losing out because most of the stocks eventually fall far below their initial offer price.

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The IPOs came ahead of a raft of policy changes enacted by Nasdaq, effective as of April 11, which include requiring companies listing on its lowest rung under certain standards to raise at least $15mn. The Securities and Exchange Commission said Nasdaq’s new rules would “promote fair and orderly markets” and “protect investors and the public interest”.

Daniel McClory, head of equity capital markets and China at US underwriter Boustead Securities, said he had “30 IPOs in process right now and more than a third are for [companies in] south-east Asia and Greater China”.

The market for large-cap listings has meanwhile disappointed hopes of a revival under Donald Trump. Waves of market volatility around the president’s tariff announcements led bankers to postpone several hotly anticipated tech IPOs while other large listings received a cool reception.

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This has not stopped a flurry of sub-$50mn deals since tariffs shook markets in April. Small IPOs have continued despite Nasdaq raising the bar last month — with eight further deals since the rule change.

“Explosive returns” from companies such as Hong Kong-based Diginex, an ESG data group, and Chinese group EPWK Holdings, a crowdsourcing platform, “can fuel interest from traders hoping for quick gains”, said Kennedy.

Line chart of Share price, $ showing Shares in EPWK surged in late April but collapsed in early May

Shares in Diginex have climbed 1,375 per cent since it listed in January. Last Tuesday, it said UAE royal Sheikh Mohammed bin Sultan bin Hamdan Al Nahyan had struck a $300mn deal giving him the right to buy 6.75mn of its shares before the end of the year.

EPWK had risen 470 per cent in the months after its February market debut, but plunged 75 per cent last Monday.

The market for these small offerings is dominated by amateur traders, who are often more willing to jump on perceived bargains in the stock market during times of disruption when big money managers stay away.

The US Financial Industry Regulatory Authority in 2023 warned investors about “unusual price increases on the day of or shortly after the IPOs of certain small-cap issuers, most of which involve issuers with operations outside the US” and “IPOs raising less than $25mn”.

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The average value of money raised in the small IPOs tracked by CMG in the six months to March was around $9mn.

Brokers say there could be more small IPOs if market conditions improve. “If the market settled down and co-operated we could do an IPO a week,” McClory said. “As it is, we’re targeting about one a month.”

The two most prolific underwriters in the space — Dominari Securities and RF Lafferty — have each taken seven companies public this year, including Chinese “machine vision” company Lianhe Sowell and Hong Kong hotpot chain MasterBeef.

RF Lafferty is headquartered in the Trump Building in New York’s Financial District. Dominari Securities, which acted as lead underwriter for Diginex’s IPO, is a subsidiary of Dominari Holdings, a fintech group based about four miles north in Trump Tower. 

Shares in Dominari Holdings rose 580 per cent in the six weeks before a February 11 filing revealing that the president’s sons Donald Trump Jr and Eric Trump had joined its advisory board, the Financial Times reported last month.

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Dominari and RF Lafferty did not respond to requests for comment.

The rush of smaller Chinese IPOs comes as concerns swirl among some investors over whether Trump will delist some Chinese stocks from US exchanges amid trade tensions with Beijing.

One banker at a small US broker said some Chinese companies listing in the US recently had “inverted their corporate structure” to obscure where they carry out the bulk of their business. He said that Chinese companies with an overseas subsidiary were converting their operating company into the parent company “to sanitise the Chinese nature of the listing”.

A bar chart of counts of microcap IPOs by country of headquarters, 2023-25

McClory said he expected that any Trump ban would probably target large state-owned enterprises and sensitive industries rather than small companies. He dismissed concerns that Chinese IPOs in the US were taking investment dollars that would otherwise benefit US entrepreneurs.

“Virtually all of these Asian IPOs were full of investors from Greater China, or Chinese-American investors in the US and outside of China,” he said. “It’s not like they come to the US and take money from American widows and orphans.”

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Man Charged With Posting Bomb Instructions Used in New Orleans Attack

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Man Charged With Posting Bomb Instructions Used in New Orleans Attack

Federal prosecutors have filed charges against a former Army serviceman they accused of distributing instructions on how to build explosives that were used by a man who conducted a deadly attack in New Orleans on New Year’s Day last year.

The former serviceman, Jordan A. Derrick, a 40-year-old from Missouri, was charged with one count of engaging in the business of manufacturing explosive materials without a license; one count of unlawful possession of an unregistered destructive device; and one count of distributing information relating to manufacturing explosives, according to a criminal complaint unsealed on Wednesday. The three charges together carry a maximum sentence of 40 years in federal prison.

Starting in September 2023, the authorities said, Mr. Derrick was using various social media sites to share videos of himself making explosive materials, including detonators. His videos provided step-by-step instructions, and he often engaged with viewers in comments, sometimes answering their questions about the chemistry behind the explosives.

The authorities said that Mr. Derrick’s videos were downloaded by Shamsud-Din Bahar Jabbar, 42, who was accused of ramming a pickup truck into a crowd on Bourbon Street in New Orleans on Jan. 1, 2025, in a terrorist attack that killed 14 people and injured dozens. Mr. Jabbar was killed in a shootout with the police. Before the attack, Mr. Jabbar had placed two explosives on Bourbon Street, the authorities said, but they did not detonate.

The authorities later recovered two laptops and a USB drive in a house that Mr. Jabbar had rented. The USB drive contained several videos created by Mr. Derrick that provided instructions on making explosives. The authorities said the explosives they recovered were consistent with the ones Mr. Derrick had posted about.

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Mr. Derrick’s lawyers did not respond to requests for comment.

Mr. Derrick was a combat engineer in the Army, where he provided personnel and vehicle support, the authorities said. He also helped supervise safety personnel during demolitions and various operations. He was honorably discharged in February 2013.

The authorities did not say whether Mr. Derrick had any communication with Mr. Jabbar, or whether the men had known each other. In some of Mr. Derrick’s videos and comments, he indicated that he was aware that his videos could be misused.

“There are a plethora of uh, moral, you know, entanglements with topics, any topic of teaching explosives, right?” he asked in one video, according to the affidavit. “Of course, the wrong people could get it.”

The authorities also said that an explosion occurred at a private residence in Odessa, Mo., on May 4, and the occupant of the residence told investigators that he had manufactured explosives after watching online tutorials from Mr. Derrick.

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Mr. Derrick’s YouTube account had more than 15,000 subscribers and 20 published videos, the affidavit said. He had also posted content on other platforms, including Odysee and Patreon. Some videos were accessible to the public for free, while others required a paid subscription to view.

“My responsibility to my countrymen is to make sure that I serve the function of the Second Amendment to strengthen it,” Mr. Derrick said in one of his videos, according to the affidavit. “This is how I serve my country for real.”

Outside of the income he received through content creation, Mr. Derrick did not have any known employment. He did receive a monthly disability check from Veterans Affairs, the affidavit stated.

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The Girls: “This isn’t ringing alarms to y’all?” : Embedded

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The Girls: “This isn’t ringing alarms to y’all?” : Embedded
Allegations pile up, but Child Protective Services declines to investigate and the school district continues to promote Ronnie Stoner. We include an update at the end of the episode. “The Girls” is a 4-part series from the Louisville Public Media’s investigative podcast, Dig.
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Chud the Builder, Known for Racist Confrontations, Charged With Attempted Murder

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Chud the Builder, Known for Racist Confrontations, Charged With Attempted Murder

A streamer known for hurling racist slurs in public settings under the nickname “Chud the Builder” was charged with attempted murder after a shooting outside a Tennessee courthouse on Wednesday, the authorities said.

The streamer, Dalton Eatherly, 28, was involved in a confrontation with an unidentified man that escalated to gunfire outside the Montgomery County Court in Clarksville, about 50 miles northwest of Nashville, the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement. Both men sustained gunshot wounds and were in stable condition, the office said.

In addition to attempted murder, Mr. Eatherly was charged with employing a firearm during dangerous felony, aggravated assault and reckless endangerment with a deadly weapon, the sheriff’s office said.

Mr. Eatherly, who is white, has accumulated an online audience by livestreaming confrontations in which he uses racist language toward Black people in public.

Law enforcement did not provide any details about the second man involved in Wednesday’s shooting. Mr. Eatherly posted an audio recording online of paramedics treating his wounds in which he claims he shot the man in self-defense.

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A video posted by the website Clarksville Now shows Mr. Eatherly on a stretcher with a microphone attached to his lapel.

Mr. Eatherly is being held at the Montgomery County Jail, pending arraignment, the sheriff’s office said.

According to court records, Mr. Eatherly was scheduled to appear for a court hearing on Wednesday morning in an unrelated case brought by Midland Credit Management, a collections agency.

A lawyer listed in court records from a separate harassment case in which Mr. Eatherly was a defendant in November did not respond to a request for comment.

On Sunday, three days before the shooting in Clarksville, Mr. Eatherly was arrested in Nashville. According to a police affidavit, Mr. Eatherly live streamed his meal at a restaurant, Bob’s Steak and Chop House, on Saturday even though the restaurant had asked him ahead of time not to do so.

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When he was confronted, Mr. Eatherly “became disruptive and started making racial statements, yelling, screaming and otherwise creating a scene,” according to the affidavit.

He then refused to pay for his $370 meal. Mr. Eatherly was charged with theft of services, disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. He was released on $5,000 bond.

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