‘Chinese google’ rocks Wall Street

The rousing reception made instant millionaires of about 100 workers at the rapidly-growing company, nicknamed ‘‘the Chinese Google,’’ and revived memories of the late-1990s dot-com boom, when new stocks routinely romped to massive gains.

‘‘It’s like I’ve gone into a time capsule,’’ said Tom Taulli, an analyst who follows new share issues at investment bank Instream Partners in San Francisco. ‘‘What year is this?’’

On Friday, Baidu.com co-founder Robin Yanhong Li was all smiles in New York as he rang the ceremonial closing bell for the electronic Nasdaq Stock Market, where his company’s stock began trading. Baidu.com raised $109 million from investors by selling 4.04 million shares at $27 a piece late Thursday.

Despite its nickname and a no-frills Web homepage, Baidu.com is far smaller than Google Inc., the US-based Internet search leader, and generates a sliver of the revenue. Like Google in China, Baidu.com also is subject to government censorship, raising risks for its long-term growth strategy, the company has warned investors in filings with US market regulators.

Nonetheless, investors in the US and elsewhere saw Baidu.com as a pure way to bet on rising Internet use in China, analysts said. It did not hurt that Google has more than tripled in value since it went public a year ago – or that Google, while a rival to Baidu.com, also owns a 2.6 per cent stake in the firm. — LAT-WP