HONG KONG, Oct 22 (Reuters) – China’s Renhe Commercial Holdings Co Ltd rose 4.4 percent in its trading debut in Hong Kong on Wednesday in an IPO unlikely to inspire other listing hopefuls to venture into a global market that has all but shut to newcomers.

Renhe (1387.HK), which develops underground shopping malls, raised $435 million, although its initial public offering was undersubscribed even after the company cut its offer price, forcing existing shareholders to make up the difference.

Numerous companies have shelved plans to raise billions of dollars by going public, and little improvement is expected anytime soon. Investors shun risk these days, and companies that want to list would be forced to accept rock-bottom valuations to get their deals done.

“The general market has to improve worldwide, but that is a tall order,” said Francis Lun, general manager of Fulbright Securities in Hong Kong.

Hong Kong’s benchmark Hang Seng Index .HSI ended 5.1 percent lower, taking its losses to around 49 percent this year.

Renhe’s listing is just the third to be completed since late July in the once-thriving Hong Kong market. In the United States, no company has gone public since the week of Aug. 3 through last week, a stretch that is the longest since 1980 when such data was collected, according to Thomson Reuters data.

With debt financing expensive and hard to come by in the global credit crunch, capital-hungry companies face dwindling financing options. In Asia, several small firms have defaulted on debt or gone into liquidation in recent weeks.

“Company stocks are falling a lot, which is making it difficult for their major shareholders to borrow money from banks using their stocks as collateral,” said Alex Huang, vice president at Mega International Securities in Taipei, which saw its first IPO this week since July 10.

“We’ll have to wait for the stock market to pick up to see an improvement in IPOs, probably not before the second quarter of next year,” he said.