SHANGHAI, April 14: The London Stock Exchange expects to win at least 20 Chinese listings in 2006, as Europe’s biggest bourse takes aim at the growing field of young Chinese entrepreneurial firms looking to raise capital.

A team of LSE officials is coordinating with Chinese regulators to encourage more qualified Chinese companies to go for London listings this year, said Jane Zhu, the bourse’s top Asia Pacific executive.

At the same time, the exchange also wants to attract more privately-owned Chinese firms to its Alternative Investment Market (AIM), a second-tier board aimed at smaller but fast-growing companies.

For China, we are targeting two types — big-sized state-owned firms, like Air China, and small but (high) potential privately-owned companies, Zhu said in a roundtable interview in Shanghai, China’s financial hub.

Air China Ltd , the country’s biggest airline, listed its shares in Hong Kong and London in a $1.2 billion initial public offering in December 2004.

We expect at least 20 Chinese companies to go for listing on our AIM this year, said Zhu, adding that 16 Chinese firms launched initial public offerings on AIM in 2005. On average, an AIM IPO can raise $10 million.

The LSE wants to take business from its trans-Atlantic rivals, the New York Stock Exchange and the tech-oriented Nasdaq , saying listing there is more difficult due to tougher compliance rules enacted in the wake of the wave of corporate scandals in the 1990s and earlier this decade.

She estimated that US listings can cost a company as much as an extra $5 million a year for compliance.

Last year alone, the Nasdaq hosted listings for at least eight Chinese companies, helping them to raise some $800 million.

Earlier this week, the Nasdaq said it bought nearly 15 per cent of the LSE, prompting the exchange to say it will consider tie-ups but adding it can thrive on its own.

Zhu said the LSE also hopes to woo a growing number of Chinese lenders looking to list overseas by taking advantage of difficulties they could face in the US due to new regulations on bank disclosure.

China’s fifth-largest Bank of Communications (BoComm) raised $2.16 billion in a listing in Hong Kong last year, and China’s top lender Industrial and Commercial Bank and smaller Bank of China are now looking to raise some $20 billion in overseas listings by early 2007.

Zhu said she didn’t feel disappointed that BoComm eventually chose Hong Kong for its IPO, because Chinese banks like BoComm could still seek secondary London listings just like Britain’s Standard Chartered PLC did.—Reuters