Goldman Sachs Made $4.9B from World’s Largest IPO

According to Bloomberg.com, Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd. (ICBC), China’s largest bank which holds 17 percent of the nation’s $5.2 trillion banking assets, sold 35.4 billion shares in Hong Kong and 13 billion shares in Shanghai in initial share sale. The $19.1 billion offering eclipsed the $18.4 billion NTT DoCoMo raised in 1998 and made the offering the world’s largetst IPO ever.  The IPO not just make ICBC the world’s fifth-largest bank, but also bring Goldman Sachs huge profit, at least on paper:

The first-day stock gains give Goldman Sachs Group Inc., the world’s most profitable securities firm, a paper gain of $4.9 billion from its investment in ICBC. Goldman and investors in its private equity funds paid almost $2.58 billion in April for 16.48 billion shares of ICBC.

Goldman, however, can’t sell ICBC shares until April 2009.

No ADR shares will be offered in US.