I went on Bloomberg TV ahead of Shein’s September 1st Hong Kong IPO, and I joked that the search for a stock exchange to list is like the story of Goldilocks. New York was too hot; London was too cold. Hong Kong was just right.
It’s been more than three years, and Shein has shaved off ¾ of its peak valuation of close to $100B in 2022. Shein filed confidentially in New York in November 2023. It got FCA approval in London in April 2025 and walked away a month later without Beijing’s sign-off. It then filed in Hong Kong in July 2025 and waited until July 10 of this year for China’s securities regulator to clear it. To list at home, it needed permission from home.
So the significant thing about September 1 is that it happened at all. Shein is finally out of geopolitical limbo, but it is listed at a heavy geopolitical discount.
The reality is that it couldn't list at the optimal time frame, and an investor base more wary of potential risk and momentum for fu…
