Which company conducted the world’s largest initial public offering in 2006?

Industrial and Commercial Bank of China conducted the world’s largest initial public offering in 2006.

The bank raised about US$21.9 billion in its dual listing in Hong Kong and Shanghai. The offering was notable because it gave investors access to one of China’s largest state-owned commercial banks while creating one of the biggest stock-market debuts ever recorded.

ICBC was established in 1984 and became a joint-stock company in 2005, shortly before its public listing. It provides retail banking, corporate lending, investment banking, payments, and other financial services.

The record is sometimes confused with Alibaba’s 2014 New York listing or Saudi Aramco’s 2019 offering. Those were also enormous IPOs, but ICBC held the widely cited record after its 2006 flotation and became one of the world’s largest banks by market capitalization.