2021 was a great year for Chinese IPOs in the US—until Didi

Chinese companies raised $12.5 billion in IPOs in the first half of 2021 in the US, but Beijing's probe into Didi could dry up that pipeline.

For the first half of 2021, there were no signs of decoupling between China and the US in one space: IPOs.

During the first six months of the year, 34 Chinese companies raised a total of $12.5 billion from listings on US exchanges, according to Refinitiv, a news and data platform under the London Stock Exchange Group. The amount of funding raised by the firms represented a 561% jump from the same period in 2020, when Chinese companies in total raised around $12 billion for the whole year.

The firms that listed in the US this year covered a range of industries, including retail, consumer goods and services, and transport, in addition to the technology sector. The frenzy of first-half listings came despite moves in the US to demand more financial transparency from Chinese firms listed there, and could reflect pent-up demand from pandemic-hit 2020.

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