In the coming days, AgBank's performance in Shanghai and Hong Kong -- where trading starts Friday -- would signal whether it maximises the number of additional shares it can offer to raise a record 22.1 billion US dollars.

The debut of the last of China's "Big Four" state banks will also test the resilience of the Chinese stock market in a volatile global economic climate.

China is on track to be the world's biggest IPO market this year with up to 300 companies expected to raise 500 billion yuan (73.6 billion dollars) this year, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Chinese IPO shares have gained 29 percent on average in their first month of trading, according to Shanghai-based Jesa Investment and Management Co.

Mainland analysts are optimistic AgBank will soar on its debut. Its shares are expected to rise five to 15 percent on their debut, according to Soochow Securities.

Hong Kong investors are likely to follow the lead of their mainland counterparts, said Jonathan Siu, research analyst at investment bank Core Pacific-Yamaichi in Hong Kong.

"The performance of the Hong Kong listing will very much depend on (Shanghai)," he told AFP. "If the (Shanghai) shares perform well on their debut, then it should be the same in Hong Kong."

Siu predicted a five to 10 percent rise for the Hong Kong shares on their debut.

AgBank's history is intertwined with China's. It was founded two years after Mao Zedong's 1949 communist revolution to lend money to China's poor farmers and distribute state money in rural areas.

But heavy exposure to China's poverty-stricken interior meant its mission was frustrated by decades of chaotic policies, leaving it awash with bad debt.

Despite Beijing's efforts to rehabilitate AgBank, by wiping more than 345.8 billion yuan from its books, it remains the weakest of the big Chinese banks.

"Whilst (AgBank)'s cleaned-up book is in a better state than its Big Bank peers when they listed in 2005-2006, the fact remains that (AgBank's) present asset quality is worse than all of its Big Bank peers now," Yuanta Securities analyst Ming Tan wrote in a report.

Observers are waiting to see how the bank manages the shift from rural-focused policy bank to profit-oriented listed company.

AgBank, which has about 24,000 branches, mostly in China, and more than 320 million customers, was expected to post a first-half net profit of more than 46 billion yuan, the official Shanghai Securities News reported this week.

That would represent an increase of around 40 percent from a year earlier, the report said, citing unnamed sources.

It also would outpace the 28 percent year-on-year 2010 growth projection previously released by the bank, which said it expects a full-year net profit of 82.9 billion yuan.

Its bad debt ratio dropped from 4.32 percent in 2008 to 2.91 percent in 2009, but experts say that figure is far higher than its rivals, with the company earning more than a quarter of its revenue from rural banking.

Despite all this, AgBank's Hong Kong sale drew almost a dozen heavyweight investors, including Qatar's sovereign investment fund, British bank Standard Chartered and Hong Kong's richest tycoon, Li Ka-shing.

Observers are waiting to see if the market can maintain that support and whether AgBank's shares can defy gloomy global sentiment.

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