BEIJING, May 3 -- The bourse behemoth that is China Citic Bank Corp is showing no signs of slowing down - in fact, it has gone up a gear.

It has already held China's biggest initial public offering this year, and has now increased the sale by 15 percent to 5.95 billion U.S. dollars after individual investors in Hong Kong ordered an incredible 230 times the number of shares available to them, Bloomberg reported yesterday.

The lender, a unit of China's biggest state-run investment company Citic Group, raised another 4.29 billion HK dollars (549 million U.S. dollars) selling shares in Hong Kong, it said in a statement to the city's stock exchange yesterday.

Citic Bank earlier raised 5.4 billion U.S. dollars selling stock in Hong Kong and Shanghai. The Shanghai-traded shares almost doubled in price on the first day of trading.

But it is not just Citic Bank that is booming - it is the whole country.

Esteemed financial expert Kitty Chan summed it up succinctly when she said: "China is still the big focus for global investors. Where else would the money go, with the economic growth and renminbi?"

Chan is a director with Cash Asset Management Ltd in Hong Kong.

Chinese companies have raised 30.8 billion U.S. dollars selling shares this year, excluding mutual-fund launches and rights offerings, with investors clamoring for stock offerings amid first-day gains that are all but guaranteed.

Bank of Communications Ltd drew 188 billion U.S. dollars of orders for its Shanghai share sale, greater than the market value of JPMorgan Chase & Co.

The benchmark CSI 300 Index has surged 74 percent this year as China's economic growth increased the appeal of Chinese equities.