Initial public offerings in China have undervalued companies by up to $200bn over the past six years, academic research indicates, reflecting a struggle to price listings in the world’s second-biggest equity market. Limits on the valuations at which companies can sell shares in IPOs on most Chinese bourses mean that groups listing onshore may have raised just a quarter of what they otherwise could have, according to a working paper provided exclusively to the Financial Times by researchers at the University of Hong Kong.