PetroChina became the first company in the world to be valued at more than $1,000bn Monday after a dramatic stock market debut in Shanghai that saw its shares nearly triple in early trading.
After slipping back during the day, the shares closed 163 per cent higher at Rmb43.96 in Shanghai, giving the company a market capitalisation more than double the value of the second-largest company, Exxon Mobil, which was worth $488bn at the close of trading on Friday in New York.
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The massive demand for the PetroChina offering is the latest sign of the stock market frenzy in mainland China where share prices have increased almost six fold over the past two years.
What a wonderful symbol of our times:
- that it is an oil company that's the first to reach that symbolic level is a sign of the times - as energy gets dearer, those companies that sit on the biggest pile of what remains of oil will benefit from massive valuations, despite the fact that their future trajectory is one of decline. Scarcity pays;
- the emergence of China as an economic powerhouse could not be underlined more starkly. The country is playing by the West's rules (profit - and its proxy, market valuations - are all that matter) and is increasingly good at it;
- just like the West, it is in the midst of a massive asset bubble, as millions discover the joys of "easy" profits in an ever-rising stock market.
Does anyone else get a fin de règne feeling? An epoch is ending - what cannot go on for ever will stop - but we don't know what it will be followed, and to al arge extent it will depend on how much we manage to bring our ideas into the public debate without being dismissed as party-poopers.