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Jim Trippon, editor of the China Stock Digest, is available for interview, analysis and commentary on China and the future of America.

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Contact: Kelley Damiani 800-952-1099 email: kdamiani@trippon.com or simply hit reply to this email.

History-Making Chinese Stock Market Tsunami Sparks Investor Enthusiasm
Worlds Biggest IPO: The Elephant in the Room Emerges

Analysis and Commentary from Leading China Expert Jim Trippon, editor of the China Stock Digest.

"Like a massive tropical weather system or a tsunami, the IPO of the Agricultural Bank of China is a huge financial event that has changed the economic climate in Asia and the world," says Jim Trippon, publisher of the China Stock Digest. "In a sense it has been the elephant in the room among Asian stock markets for at least a month," he added.

The Hong Kong portion of Agricultural Bank of China Ltd.'s initial public offering has now been priced at $0.41 a share while the Shanghai offering was priced at $0.39 a share, which is considered the high range of the price spectrum.

"The deal could become the largest stock offering in history, even though it has raised substantially less than the $30 billion originally expected," Trippon noted. He added, "The offering was 20 times oversubscribed and the sheer size of the deal has drained liquidity from Chinese markets, making the slump on the Shanghai Stock Exchange worse than valuations suggest it should have been."

"Now we are seeing the flip side of the coin," Trippon explained. "The fact that the bank's IPO was oversubscribed and sold at the high end is a powerful signal of optimism about China." Agricultural Bank of China, like all of China's major banks, received a major injection of capital and relief from its non-performing loans as it prepared to go public.

"Agricultural Bank had been in the worst condition of any major Chinese bank because it had acted as an arm of the government, making mandated loans to support poor rural areas," Trippon pointed out. "The fact that this massive IPO could be so popular suggests much more investor confidence in the Chinese banking system than we've seen among the gloom-mongers in the business media."

Trippon noted that, "Many other listed banks in China rose after AgBank received such an enthusiastic welcome." Latin American stocks also shot up after the IPO pricing. "China is a huge consumer of resources from countries like Brazil," Trippon said. "The gains in Latin American indexes shows that there is a lot of optimism that China's economy has the strength to drive global growth."

Although it serves poorer rural regions, the bank is showing powerful profit growth, Trippon added. "The bank boosted its profitability by more than 25 percent to $9.5 billion last year. It forecasts net income will rise to at least $12.13 billion in 2010."

Agricultural Bank had an army of 320 million customers in China at the end of 2009. It blankets the nation's rural regions with more than 23,000 outlets. "There's a lot of room for growth there," Trippon concluded.

About Jim Trippon:

Jim Trippon is Editor-in-Chief of China Stock Digest, America's #1 pure play China stock newsletter resource for research on the large public company stocks of China. Trippon leads annual investor trade delegations to China and his China Stock Digest has been recognized as the top performing China advisory by the Hulbert Financial Digest, a division of Dow Jones. Hulbert is America's premier independent rating service for investment newsletters.

Trippon's is author of the book Becoming Your Own China Stock Guru: The Ultimate Investor's Guide to Profiting from China's Economic Boom Wiley (April, 2008).

Jim Trippon has been widely featured as an on air contributor to CNN, CNBC, Fox News, Fox Business, and many other national and international media outlets.

For more information please visit www.chinastockdigest.com

Kelley Dee 800-952-1099 email: pr@trippon.com