It is wise for the Chinese government to unload most major national banks before it has to open its financial market later this year due to its WTO obligations. (Disclosure: The last time I had an ICBC bank account was over a decade ago. I'm currently enjoying excellent service from China Merchants Bank.)

China's biggest bank completed the world's biggest initial share sale late last night, raising as much as $21.9 billion.

At a meeting in San Francisco, Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd. and its advisers set the initial public offering price at the top end of an indicative range, at HK$3.07 (39 U.S. cents) a share, according to a person familiar with the matter. That means ICBC, as the bank is known, raised at least $19.07 billion in the sale, besting Japan's NTT Mobile Communications Network Inc., whose $18.4 billion IPO in 1998 had been the biggest. The ICBC deal could still increase by 15% to $21.9 billion if an overallotment option is exercised.

Having generated more than $300 billion of demand from global institutional investors, the deal highlights China's growing importance on international capital markets. For the past decade, the country's big state-owned companies have turned to global markets to become more market-oriented, to improve transparency and disclosure, and to fortify their capital bases. In the past two years, as the nation's top lenders have begun going public, China's role in global markets has grown even more.