Chinese rail giants merge into world’s second biggest industrial firm

CRRC may not be a name to conjure with right now, but since this month's merger of two of China's state-owned railroad equipment makers, CSR Corp and China CNR Corp, it is the world's second-biggest industrial company, trailing only General Electric.

This puts CRRC ahead of Germany's Siemens and France's Alstom.

China, intent on moving up the value chain in industrial production, hopes the €115 billion behemoth will help make it more competitive at winning contracts for high-speed rail lines overseas, especially in Africa, Latin America, India and southeast Asia.

Shares in CRRC surged by the daily trading limit of 10 per cent on the day its stocks resumed trading last week. CRRC's biggest competitor will be Japan and both are competing to win a proposed high-speed rail project in California.

Last year CNR won a $567 million (€502 million) deal for Boston subway trains, beating Bombardier's bid by nearly 50 per cent.

"It used to be that CSR and CNR were competing against Bombardier and Alstom; now it has become China versus everybody else," Alexious Lee, head of industrials research for CLSA in Hong Kong, told Bloomberg.