Dai-ichi Life Insurance Co. debuted Thursday on the Tokyo Stock Exchange's first section with an opening price of ¥160,000 per share, sharply higher than its initial public offering price of ¥140,000.
Japan's second-largest life insurer, formerly a mutually owned company, is valued at ¥1.6 trillion based on the opening price, making it the largest listing in terms of capitalization since NTT DoCoMo Inc.'s 1998 debut at ¥7.4 trillion.
Given the giant scale of the IPO, the TSE took the extraordinary step of only accepting orders until 1 p.m., when all trading of the stock was halted to determine its price on the first day of listing, even though other stocks kept trading until 3 p.m.