A number of dotcoms and high-tech companies, usually the dominant market flavour in Singapore, have put scheduled IPOs on hold in recent months because of the anaemic performance of the local stock market. But the family-owned Qian Hu fish farming company refused to be put off, offering 12.75 million shares at 30 Singapore cents (17 US cents) each."

It's always doing something against the tide," Executive Chairman Kenny Yap quipped at a media briefing when asked why the company was bent on going public when investor interest in the equity market was weak.

Qian Hu, which means "thousand lakes" in Mandarin, is the first fish farm to be listed in Singapore and will make its debut on the stock market's junior board on November 8."

Listing is only the beginning" of a new growth phase for the company, Yap said, dismissing the notion that fish farming was a sunset industry in Singapore where there is a strong government-led emphasis on the hi-tech sector."

This is a sunrise industry with the whole world as the market," he said. "It's recession proof."

The three million dollars raised from the IPO will be used primarily to expand the company's distribution network in Thailand, Malaysia and China. Yap said Singapore supplied 30 per cent of the world's aquarium fish, and Qian Hu Corp. was projected to achieve at least 35 million dollars in revenue this year, up from 26.4 million in 1999.

Apart from rearing and distributing more than 500 varieties of aquarium fish, the group also breeds dragon fish which are regarded by Chinese businessmen as a symbol of prosperity and luck. A dragon fish can fetch between 3,000 and 50,000 Singapore dollars, depending on its size.