In the United States, the majority of technology flotations have fallen below their issue price.
Recent stock market flotations of firms like WorldOnline, Lastminute.com and Lycos Europe have failed to impress.
In 2012, the host of social-media flotations could include GlamMedia, Kayak Software and LivingSocial.
Malays get privileged access to public-sector jobs, university places, stockmarket flotations and, above all, government contracts.
Fear of bureaucratic attacks also explains a spate of Russian flotations, often of smallish stakes, in London.
IPOs last month after a two-year gap (see chart), but three other mooted flotations have been postponed.
But flotations also force hedge-fund managers to be more transparent, diluting the mystique on which their high fees partly depend.
Edward Petry, head of the Ethics Officer Association, says the most recent issue taxing his members comes from the fad for Internet flotations.
"Lock-up" provisions on some shares are common in stock market flotations.
In London we distinguish (perhaps not so much these days but we certainly did when I took my stock broking exams) between flotations and introductions.
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The government sold more than 50% of BT shares to the public in November 1984, and offloaded most of its remaining shares in two subsequent flotations.
The London Stock Exchange has been wooing Asian flotations, such as that of Air China, due next week, with claims that it has less strict requirements than New York.
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Three big Latin American privatisations, involving the flotations of a Venezuelan aluminium producer, Ecuador's telephone company and a Brazilian electricity distributor, have run into difficulty recently for want of buyers.
There are rumours that sections of the railway will begin to be sold in public flotations as early as this spring, though the government will retain large amounts of the associated debt.
Second, as the flotations of Fortress and Blackstone, two large and varied alternative-investment firms, have shown, the stockmarket is willing to pay a very high multiple for companies that earn performance fees.
Because the banks' flotations would be the country's most prominent and ambitious yet, any corruption unearthed once they are public would damage investor confidence badly not just in the banks, but in other Chinese companies too.
The deal is only the latest in a string of flotations - mostly in Hong Kong, where the "red chips" make up a significant proportion of the market - to raise money to modernise its economy.
Exelixis and Maxygen, two firms applying their technology to agricultural ends, had successful stockmarket flotations in the past year, largely because they also have human-health research programmes that allow them to be seen more as medical biotechnology firms than as agricultural ones.
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