Baidu unit Qunar files for S$156m US listing

NEW YORK — Qunar.com, a unit of Chinese search engine giant Baidu, has filed for a US$125 million (S$156 million) initial public offering (IPO) on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) as investor appetite for Chinese listings in the United States rebounds.

An IPO by Qunar, which operates China’s top-ranked travel search engine, would be the biggest listing by a Chinese company in the US since 2011, when concerns over accounting frauds at US-listed Chinese firms doused interest in these companies. Qunar had aimed for a listing in the US last year.

The firm said on Monday it planned to sell American depositary shares and has appointed Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank as lead underwriters.

Baidu became Qunar’s largest shareholder in 2011, when it invested US$306 million in the company.

Qunar, founded in 2005, provides a search engine for airline, train, hotel, and tour packages, and offers group-buying deals and user discussion forums on its website.

Online retailer LightInTheBox was the first Chinese company to list in the US this year, raising US$79 million on the NYSE in June. The stock last closed at US$11.85 per share, up 24.7 per cent from its IPO price of US$9.50.

But the most eagerly anticipated of all the Chinese companies is e-commerce giant Alibaba Group. It ended discussions last week with the Hong Kong Stock Exchange for a listing in the city, after the bourse rejected a proposed structure that would have allowed Alibaba’s senior management to retain control over the board after it goes public.

Alibaba, valued at between US$70 billion and as high as US$120 billion, is now weighing a New York listing, people familiar with the matter said last week. DOW JONES