Geely's sales tumble 75pc amid outbreak

Mainland property management service provider Ye Xing saw the retail portion of its initial public offering nearly 2,000 times oversubscribed, freezing about HK$31.6 billion.

Its peer, Henan-based Xingye Wulian Service saw its retail tranche 1,413 times oversubscribed.

Ye Xing intends to raise up to HK$158 million and offers 100 million shares at an indicative price range of HK$1.32 to HK$1.58. The minimum investment amount is HK$3,191.84 for per board lot of 2,000 shares. It expects to list on the mainboard on March 13.

The Beijing-based company has attracted Successful Lotus, backed by Peter Lee Ka-kit, joint chairman of Henderson Land Development (0012) as a cornerstone investor, which agreed to subscribe to shares worth of HK$21 million.

This came as the escalating coronavirus outbreak has put property managers under the spotlight, due to increasing demand for epidemic prevention and control services, such as sanitization and restrictions on movement in and out of housing estates.

Meanwhile, Prudential is rumored to spin off or sell a stake in the US business Jackson National Life, The Sunday Times reports, after New York-based hedge fund Third Point called on the British insurer to separate its Asian and US businesses in February.

The stake of the activist hedge fund run by Daniel Loeb is equivalent to just under 5 percent ownership of Prudential, making the fund the company's second-largest shareholder and Prudential the hedge fund's biggest holding.

Geely Automobile (0175) saw its sales volume dwindle by 75 percent year-on-year to 21,168 units in February due to the coronavirus.

Meanwhile, total sales volume in the first two months plunged 45 percent year-on-year to 133,006 units, representing only 9 percent of the company's full-year sales volume target of 1.41 million units.

Though China's business and travel activities are steadily recovering, rapidly rising infections globally will pose a challenge to the country's broader economic resumption.

Nomura estimated about 61.6 percent of the firms hardest hit by the health crisis in China have resumed work as of March 8, and 74.1 percent in the broader economy.

In the property market, Longfor said contracted sales in the first two months dropped 31.3 percent year-on-year to 17.11 billion yuan (HK$19.13 billion).

As for trade, the US is willing to show China some flexibility on its pledges to boost American imports as long as Beijing ensures exports don't surge when production returns to full strength, which would widen the trade imbalance between the world's two largest economies, people familiar with the discussions said.

Given Beijing's focus on containing the outbreak and the country's lagging demand for American imports, US officials have told their Chinese counterparts that the purchasing boost, signed in January with specific target dates and commodities, could start off slowly, according to people with knowledge of the discussions.

But that understanding apparently comes with some conditions.

The Trump administration has made it clear that this is only an option as long as there isn't a jump in Chinese exports when virus-related industrial shutdowns end.

A sharp rebound in shipments of Chinese products without a corresponding upswing in imports would swell the already gaping US trade deficit with China - the metric President Donald Trump has frequently based his success on. One source said another condition is that the total number of the purchase targets cannot change and that China will fulfill the commitments eventually.

The White House declined to comment and directed questions to the US Trade Representative, where a spokesman said the agency hadn't had such a conversation with its Chinese counterparts and the US expects China to meet its commitments under the agreement.