| State-owned Banks |
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Postal Savings Bank of China Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Limited (ICBC) is a leading financial player in China with an outstanding customer base and multi-dimension business structure. On April 21, 2005, the Chinese government formally approved ICBC’s plan of shareholding structural reform and injected USD 15 billion. ICBC afterwards successfully completed the financial structuring and international audit. On October 28, 2005, ICBC was officially transformed from a state-owned commercial bank into a share holding company and renamed as Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Limited. The new entity has a registered capital RMB 248 billion and 248 billion shares, with a face value of RMB 1 per share. The Ministry of Finance and Central SAFE Investments Limited are its two shareholders holding 124 billion shares respectively. On January 27, 2006, ICBC entered into strategic investment and cooperation agreement with Goldman Sachs Group, Allianz Group and American Express Limited and acquired an investment of USD 3.782 billion. On June 19, 2006, ICBC signed the strategic investment and cooperation agreement with the Governing Board of All-China Social Security Fund who would inject RMB 18.028 billion through buying in ICBC’s new shares. On October 27, 2006, ICBC was listed on both Hong Kong and Shanghai markets. It raised USD 21.9 billion from equity market through IPO, became world largest IPO ever so far. ICBC operates 18,764 domestics branches, 106 overseas branches and 1,165 agencies around the globe with total assets of RMB 6,454.1 billion at the end of 2005. The bank had issued 145.22 million bank cards with a total consumption amount of RMB 241 billion, and had owned a total number of 18,270 ATMs and 1,473 self-service bank offices by the end of 2005. China Construction Bank In 1954, the People’s Construction Bank of China was founded as a wholly state-owned bank under the direction of the Ministry of Finance of the PRC to administer and disburse government funds for construction and infrastructure related projects under the state economic plan. In 1996, the People’s Construction Bank of China changed its name to China Construction Bank (CCB). CCB is headquartered in Beijing with an extensive network of 14,250 branch outlets as of June 30, 2005. It also has two joint-venture subsidiaries in China and maintain overseas branches in Hong Kong, Singapore, Frankfurt, Johannesburg and Seoul; representative offices in New York and London; and a subsidiary bank in Hong Kong. CCB’s H shares began trading on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on 27 October 2005. The bank had RMB 5166.24 billion in total assets as of June 30, 2006. Bank of Communications Founded in 1908, Bank of Communications (BOCOM) is one of four oldest banks in China and one of the early note-issuing banks of China. In 1958, while the Hong Kong Branch continued to operate, the mainland business of BOCOM was merged with People’s Bank of China and the People’s Construction Bank of China on BOCOM’s foundation. To operate in line with economic reforms and development, BOCOM was restructured on July 24, 1986 with approval from the State Council and began operation anew on April 1, 1987, thus becoming China’s first state-owned shareholding commercial bank. Its head office was in Shanghai. On June 23, 2005, BOCOM was listed in Hong Kong, the first China based commercial bank of its kind to get listed outside of the Chinese mainland. BOCOM has altogether 95 branches including 28 provincial branches, 7 of which come directly under the head office, and 60 sub-branches under the provincial banking jurisdictions. There are 140 cities where sub-branches (there are 45 county-level sub-branches without independent accounting in addition to the above 95 sub-branches) with a total of 2,610 BOCOM outlets in operation. BOCOM has set up branches in New York, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore and Seoul as well as representative offices in London and Frankfurt. BOCOM has a staff of nearly 60,000 employees. Bank of China 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 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. Agricultural Bank of China Agricultural Bank of China (ABC), one of the large-four state-owned commercial banks, with the total assets of RMB 4013.77 billion by the end of 2004, owns 31000 branches and banking offices, including ones in Singapore, Hong Kong, London, Tokyo and New York. The bank has issued 178.16 million bank cards with the revenue of RMB 3.8 billion by the end of 2004. |
