Ping An Insurance (Group) Co., which is raising as much as 38.9 billion yuan ($5 billion) in China's second-biggest stock sale, started gauging investor interest in a nation that has only one publicly traded insurer.

Shenzhen-based Ping An, China's second-biggest insurer, is offering as many as 1.15 billion shares at between 31.8 yuan and 33.8 yuan apiece, according to a statement sent late yesterday. It began taking orders today.

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Ping An follows bigger rival China Life Insurance Co. in selling shares after Chinese stocks rebounded from a four-year slump and doubled in 2006. They will be the only two insurance stocks on China's domestic stock markets, where more than 1,400 companies are traded.

"Insurance stocks are rare in China so there should be a scarcity premium,'' said Chris Tang, a manager at hedge fund Marco Polo Investments Group in Hong Kong. ``The sale is attractive."

Shares of both companies already trade on the Hong Kong exchange. Ping An raised HK$14.3 billion ($1.83 billion) in an initial public offering in Hong Kong in 2004. China Life's December 2003 IPO brought in $3.5 billion.

Ping An, a fifth owned by HSBC Holdings Plc, is tapping investors to help finance an expansion into the banking and securities industries as growth in insurance premiums slows. China's insurance market expanded 14 percent last year, about half the pace of 2003, according to the industry regulator.

Coming Home

Chinese companies that sold shares overseas during the 2001-2005 stock market slump are now returning home, buoyed by the 121 percent surge in the benchmark Shanghai and Shenzhen 300 Index last year. Air China Ltd., the nation's biggest international airline, in August raised 4.6 billion yuan in Shanghai. Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd. sold 46.6 billion yuan of shares last year, the most ever in the country.

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