Shares of Chinese tutoring company TAL Education Group are climbing after the initial public offering raised $120 million.

Shares had priced at $10 a share, the top of the expected range, suggesting strong demand for the company's stock.

Its shares rose $4.61, or 46 percent, to $14.61 in late morning trading Wednesday after rising as high as $15.70 earlier in the session.

The shares are trading under the symbol "XRS" on the New York Stock Exchange.

TAL says it is China's largest after-school tutoring service for K-12 students. Its IPO follows three strong first-day performances from Chinese companies since September.

China's interest-rate increase has less to do with the controversy over the value of its currency than with a straightforward effort to fight inflation— but it risks intensifying the currency battle nonetheless.

Many observers say China's move Tuesday to raise key rates is a textbook response to the country's strong growth, rising inflation and the risk of a dangerous property bubble. More increases are likely, they say, as China tries to slow the frenzied borrowing that helped it through the recent recession.

But the rate move—which comes just days before finance ministers and central bankers from the Group of 20 industrial and developing nations meet in South Korea—has implications for China's currency, too. In most economies, higher interest rates attract foreign investors looking for better returns. The cash flooding into the economy boosts the local currency. But China's economy is mostly closed, limiting—though not eliminating—the impact of higher rates on the yuan.

The increase in interest rates could actually complicate matters for China on the currency front, said Nicholas Lardy, a specialist in China at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a Washington think tank. Given that Chinese interest rates were already above what developed countries are paying on one-year deposits, and that the market is betting that the yuan will rise over time, the rate increase could serve only to attract more investor money.

China has told its biggest banks to increase reserves in a new move to control lending, news reports said Tuesday, as Beijing tries to cool inflation and housing prices without derailing its recovery from the global slump.

There was no government announcement, but Goldman Sachs said its researchers received confirmation of the order from bank employees. Phone calls to the central bank's press section were not answered.

The top six state-owned Chinese lenders were told to increase reserves by 0.5 percentage points to 17.5 percent of their deposits, the Beijing News and other newspapers said, citing unidentified bank employees.

China's rapid growth is easing after hitting 10.3 percent in the second quarter but inflation is creeping up and Beijing is trying to control housing prices that surged earlier amid a credit boom.

The reserve hike "is used as a clear signal to commercial banks that the central bank is willing to take actions to control lending," said Goldman economists Yu Song and Helen Qiao in a report.

Chinese banks were ordered to step up lending in support of Beijing's stimulus, which helped China rebound quickly from the global crisis. But regulators tightened controls early this year after the credit boom fueled a surge in stock and real estate prices, prompting concerns about dangerous price bubbles.

The communist government imposed lending curbs and raised reserve requirements but has avoided a rate hike that it worries might derail China's recovery.

The latest reserve hike would take about 200 billion yuan ($29 billion) out of the pool of money for lending, a relatively small amount, according to Yu and Qiao.

The decision to avoid more severe steps "may also reflect the significant uncertainties facing the economy and disagreements among the views of policy makers," they said.

The reserve hike also might be an attempt to cool a surge in inflows of foreign capital attracted by China's rebound and the strengthening of its yuan against the U.S. dollar, Nomura said in a report.

Coal India Ltd., the world's largest coal company, announced Tuesday a $3.4 billion initial public offering that is India's largest-ever and adds to a growing list of record-breaking IPOs in Asia this year.

Foreign investors fleeing slow growth and low returns in the developed world have rushed into Asia, pumping up stock markets and snapping up shares in new offerings, which can more easily absorb large chunks of capital.

"There's a surge of liquidity created in the western world," said Naresh Kothari, president of Edelweiss Securities in Mumbai. "The belief in the recovery of their economies is not very high. A lot of this liquidity is looking for returns and the best growth is available in Asia and emerging markets."

So far this year, IPOs in Asia, excluding Japan, have totaled $100.5 billion, up from $36.9 billion in the same period last year. It's even topped the $59.1 billion raised in the same period of 2007 when share issues were booming.

According to Dealogic, China had the largest IPO in history in July, with the $22.1 billion offering of the Agricultural Bank of China Ltd. Singapore hit a new record high in October, with the launch of a $2.6 billion IPO for Global Logistic Properties Ltd.

South Korea notched its largest IPO ever in April, with the $4.4 billion offering of Samsung Life Insurance Co. Ltd. and the Philippines broke its record in October with the $537 million Cebu Air share sale.

The Indian government is selling 10 percent of its stake in state-run Coal India Ltd., part of a broad divestment plan to reduce the fiscal deficit and loosen state control over some of the nation's biggest companies. India aims to sell off pieces of state-run companies worth 400 billion rupees ($8.9 billion) this year.

The market struggled to find direction amid expectations for QE2 and discouraging employment data from the private sector in September. Stocks ended Wednesday mixed on relatively low volume, as investors digested the data and took a step back prior to same-store sales tomorrow and the all-important September jobs report on Friday.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average ended up 22.93 points, or 0.21%, to close at 10,967. The S&P 500 fell 0.80 points, or 0.07%, to close at 1159, and the Nasdaq was down 19.17 points, or 0.80%, to finish at 2380.

Gold continued its stellar run, rising as high as nearly $1,350 an ounce, before slipping back slightly, while copper prices hit a two-year high, boosted in part by a weaker U.S. dollar. Benchmark crude added $0.41, to settle at $83.23 a barrel, on the New York Mercantile Exchange.