The spin-off IPO for Shanda Games Limited (NASDAQ: GAME) is coming next week and the company has set the expected price band for its 63+ million American Depositary Shares in range of $10.50 and $12.50 per share.  The company is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Shanda Interactive Entertainment Limited (NASDAQ: SNDA) and will in many ways continue after the IPO to effectively be under the parent.

The inspiration for this was this the successful Changyou.com  (NASDAQ: CYOU) spin-off IPO from Sohu.com (NASDAQ: SOHU).  Changyou has effectively doubled since its IPO.

The company is offering 13,043,500 ADSs, and Shanda Interactive is selling the remaining 50 million ADSs. Each ADS represents two class A ordinary shares of Shanda Games.  This has Goldman Sachs (Asia) as the lead underwriter along with J.P. Morgan and the co-manager is Nomura Securities.

Earlier this month it had filed an SEC registration statement to raise approximately $800 million in a partial spin-out IPO.

JON C. OGG
September 16, 2009