By Sherry Qin

A U.S. congressional committee has urged two U.S. banks to pull out of working on Chinese battery giant Contemporary Amperex Technology's planned listing in Hong Kong, expressing "significant concerns" over their involvement in the process.

By underwriting CATL's initial public offering, Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase are exposing themselves to "serious regulatory, financial, and reputational risks," Rep. John Moolenaar (R., Mich.), chairman of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, wrote in letters addressed to the lenders' chief executives on Thursday.

The letters to BofA CEO Brian Moynihan and JPMorgan's Jamie Dimon made reference to President Trump's "America First Investment Policy," aimed at preventing U.S. investments into companies allegedly tied to China's military.

"CATL's IPO is the exact kind of investment this policy was designed to block," wrote Moolenaar, head of the committee that describes itself as committed to building bipartisan consensus on the threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party.

"We are troubled by reports that JPMorgan and other American banks aggressively pursued the IPO of CATL, despite its public designation as a Chinese military company and its ties to sanctioned entities," Moolenaar said in the letter addressed to Dimon.

The Pentagon in January added CATL and other well-known Chinese businesses to a list of companies it identifies as military in nature. CATL has said that its addition is a mistake and that it would take legal action to address the issue if necessary.

CATL, Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.

The electric-vehicle battery maker, which is listed in Shenzhen, applied for a secondary listing in Hong Kong earlier this year to advance its global expansion strategy and improve its competitiveness.

Analysts say CATL could raise around $5 billion in the offering, which would make it the city's largest listing since ByteDance rival Kuaishou's $5.4 billion IPO in 2021.

CATL, which supplies batteries to automakers such as Tesla and Volkswagen, accounted for more than one-third of the global battery market in 2024, more than double that of BYD, which ranked second, according to Seoul-based SNE Research.

Shares of CATL were down 0.8% in afternoon trading on Friday.

Write to Sherry Qin at sherry.qin@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

April 18, 2025 02:30 ET (06:30 GMT)

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