BEIJING - Legend Capital Ltd, a leading Chinese venture capital investment company, will always view Legend Holding Ltd as its largest investor, senior executives of the company said on Thursday.

The executives also said that Legend Capital expects IPOs this year for more than five of the companies in which it has invested.

"Legend Holding will always be our largest limited partner (investor), but we are an independent investment company and seek financial return as the main goal," said Zhu Linan, president of Legend Capital, a subsidiary company of Legend Holding.

Legend Capital exited five companies through domestic and foreign IPOs last year.

Among these was Parade Technologies Ltd, a semiconductor company that went public on Taiwan's GreTai Securities Market in September.

Parade's market capitalization exceeded $300 million on its debut. It was Legend's first IPO in Taiwan.

"We predict that more companies we invested in will go public in 2012 than last year. Some are already undergoing the review and approval process," Zhu said.

Legend Capital has five dollar-denominated funds and two yuan-denominated funds totaling 13 billion yuan ($2.06 billion).

Legend's fifth-phase dollar-denominated fund of $500 million finished fundraising last April. Its second-phase yuan-denominated fund of 3.5 billion yuan wrapped up fundraising in December.

"We invested in more than 30 companies last year, and the total number of companies we've invested in is about 150," said Chen Hao, a partner of Legend Capital.

Chen added that Legend had exited from 20 companies via IPOs and 11 through mergers and acquisitions.

According to Chen, the company concentrates on innovation and growth enterprises with operations that are in China or are related to China in six sectors: information technology, clean technology, healthcare, modern services, advanced manufacturing and consumer goods.

In regard to the second-phase yuan-denominated fund of 3.5 billion yuan, Legend Holding and the National Council for Social Security Fund each invested 1 billion yuan.

Other investors were institutions rather than private enterprises or rich individuals.

"We choose professional investors who have long-term investment strategies in China and know how to cooperate with fund management teams," Zhu said.

Wang Nengguang, CFO at Legend Capital, said they could actually have raised about $800 million for the fifth-phase dollar-denominated fund.

Wang added that the company had achieved a "good performance" and the return on investment of the first-phase dollar-denominated fund was seven times.