Bank of China is one of China’s four state-owned commercial banks. Its businesses cover commercial banking, investment banking and insurance. Members of the group include BOC Hong Kong, BOC International, BOCG Insurance and other financial institutions. In terms of tier one capital, it ranked 18th among the world’s top 1,000 banks by The Banker magazine in 2005.

Bank of China was established in 1912 pursuant to the approval of Mr. Sun Yatsen. In the following 37 years until the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, the Bank served as the central bank, international exchange bank and specialized foreign trade bank successively.

In 1949, Bank of China became the state-designated specialized foreign exchange bank and substantially contributed to development of foreign trade and the national economy.
In 1994 and following the entrenchment of the reform of the financial sector, Bank of China was converted into a wholly state-owned commercial bank.

In 2003, it was named by the State Council as one of the pilot banks for joint-stock reform of wholly state-owned commercial banks. On August 26, 2004, Bank of China Limited was formally incorporated in Beijing as a state-controlled joint stock commercial bank.

Bank of China is the most internationalized commercial bank in China. BOC London Branch, the first overseas branch of the Chinese banks, was established in 1929. From then on, the Bank successively opened branches in global financial centers, and has built up its network in 27 countries and regions. Currently, it had over 10000 domestic operations and over 600 overseas operations. In 1994 and 1995, Bank of China became the note issuing bank in Hong Kong and Macao respectively.

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