(Yicai Global) May 8 -- China Pacific Insurance has secured approval from the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Approval to apply for a secondary listing on the London Stock Exchange that would make it the first mainland-listed insurer to issue global depositary receipts in the United Kingdom.

The Shanghai-based firm will still need the British regulators and both the London and Shanghai bourses to agree before it can issue the GDRs, the company said in a statement yesterday. It revealed plans in September to issue up to 628.7 million new mainland shares for the GDRs, or 10 percent of its equity listed in China.

The move would make China Pacific the first insurer listed on the Chinese mainland to go public in the UK by issuing GDRs, and the first to list on the mainland, in Hong Kong and overseas through a share-splitting scheme. The issuance will allow overseas investors to trade the shares, representative of the company’s mainland stocks, freely in the secondary market. Huatai Securities became the first Chinese firm to issue GDRs in London in June.

“We have not given up,” China Pacific’s Chairman Kong Qingwei said at the firm’s 2019 performance conference in March after admitting that the Covid-19 pandemic was affecting the listing plans. Work on the offering is proceeding in an orderly manner and the company will issue the GDRs as soon as possible but after market confidence has been restored, he added.

The insurance giant ranked 199th on the Fortune Global 500 last year, making CNY8.4 billion (USD1.2 billion) in profit, a 53.1 percent gain on the year as revenue rose by 54 percent to CNY27.7 billion.

Editor: James Boynton