By rights, Agricultural Bank of China should have struggled: the least vigorous of the nation's big four banks, pitched into Asia's worst-performing equity market this year. But with all the machinery of the state behind it, the Shanghai leg of what could still become the world's biggest initial public offering was hardly going to flop. And it didn't. Granted, Thursday's first-day gain of less than 1 per cent was exceedingly modest: the last five banks to list in Shanghai recorded average bounces on debut of 13 per cent. But AgBank had not been priced to fly off the shelves. Underwriters had won a small premium to Bank of China, on a forward book value basis, on behalf of a bank that was deep in negative equity as recently as 2007.

The rest of the supporting cast should take a bow too. AgBank was the first state-owned Chinese debutant to use strategic investors since Cosco, the shipping group, roped in the likes of Sinochem, China Aerospace and Minmetals in June 2007. Two-fifths of AgBank's shares were locked up for at least a year with 27 strategic investors, and another fifth with 173 institutions, under the standard three-month trading restriction. That meant that of the 23.4bn shares floated (8 per cent of AgBank's total), just 9.4bn could be traded; of those, 4bn changed hands. Normally, that kind of first-day churn is consistent with at least a double-digit gain in the share price, as retail investors who missed out on the allocation lottery scramble for a quick flip. That the price only just broke even suggests unusually high selling pressure, and some heroic efforts from the stabilisation agents at China International Capital Corp to claw back shares in the market. Goldman Sachs performs that role for the Hong Kong leg on Friday. Best of luck, gents.