HONG KONG - China Merchants Bank made a strong debut Friday in early trading on Hong Kong's stock market as another Chinese lender, the country's biggest, got ready to kick off what could be the world's largest initial public offering.

Retail and institutional investors snapped up China Merchants' shares, which opened at HK$10.88 (US$1.39), 27 percent higher than their IPO price of HK$8.55 (US$1.09). The bank, the mainland's sixth-largest lender, raised US$2.4 billion in the second biggest IPO in Hong Kong this year.

The listing came one day after Industrial & Commercial Bank of China got approval to list in Hong Kong. The bank planned to launch its US$19 billion IPO simultaneously in Hong Kong and Shanghai in late October.

ICBC was expected to release its prospectus online later Friday, a person familar with the IPO told The Associated Press.

The IPO could be the world's largest since NTT Mobile Communications Network Inc., or NTT DoCoMo Inc., raised US$18.4 billion in 1998, according to market-data provider Dealogic Inc.

ICBC would be the third of China's big four state-owned banks to list in the last year. The other two were the smaller Bank of China Ltd. and China Construction Bank Corp. Both have fared well in Hong Kong as investors viewed them as ways to tap into China's fast-growing economy.

China Merchants' strong debut Friday was a sign that investors are still excited about getting a piece of a major Chinese bank.

Demand for the retail portion of the bank's IPO were more than 266 times oversubscribed. To better meet demand, the retail tranche was raised to 20 percent from 5 percent of China Merchants' total offering. The institutional tranche of the deal was more than 50 times covered, with orders totaling US$96.4 billion.