Cross-border E-commerce Retailer SHEIN Restarts New York IPO Plan

Chinese fashion retailer SHEIN is reviving plans to list in New York this year, Reuters reported on Tuesday, citing two people familiar with the matter.

It was not immediately clear how much the company was looking to raise from its New York debut but sources said that SHEIN founder Chris Xu was eyeing Singapore citizenship partly to bypass China’s new and tougher rules on overseas listings.

SHEIN first started preparing for a U.S. IPO to raise at least $700 million about two years ago, but shelved the plan due to unpredictable markets.

A SHEIN spokesperson said the company had no current plans to go public while in May of last year, SHEIN also said in a statement that the company had no plans for IPO in the short term.

Headquartered in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, SHEIN is one of the largest online fashion retailers in the world for overseas consumers, and the United States is its largest market. SHEIN’s major investors include JAFCO Asia, IDG Capital, Greenwoods Investment, Sequoia China, Tiger Global and Shunwei Capital.

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SHEIN’s revenue last year was about 100 billion yuan ($15.8 billion) since the epidemic pushed the development of e-commerce. At the beginning of 2021, SHEIN was valued at about $50 billion.