Biography | 马化腾 Ma Huateng — The Exchange Square Morning Tencent Began Trading

The listing that made Tencent a public company was not filed in Shenzhen.

On 16 June 2004 Tencent Holdings began dealing on the main board of the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong under stock code 0700.

Naspers, then Tencent's largest shareholder, told its own investors on 7 June that the Listing Committee had granted approval in principle and that dealings were expected to start that Wednesday.

The offer was priced at HK$3.70 a share, the top of an indicated range of HK$2.77 to HK$3.70, according to contemporaneous reports including the Wall Street Journal.

China Daily, working from the company's statement the week before, put the sale at more than 420 million shares.

A Beijing Modern Business Daily report published the next morning gave the open as HK$4.375 and a session high of HK$4.625.

The same China Daily preview recorded Naspers at 37.5 percent and Ma, as chief executive, at 14.43 percent going into the listing.

The trading floor sat then in the Exchange Square complex in Central, the same cluster that still houses the exchange.

Photo: Timsdad, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Portrait (2019): 中国新闻网, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons