China Minsheng Bank Corp will revamp its financial center to focus on five sectors for more customer-oriented services to enhance its competitiveness and profitability in the long run.

 

Its corporate banking operations will be split into five units - real estate, energy, transport, metallurgy and institutions - to ensure that services are geared toward customers, the Beijing-based company said in a statement to the Shanghai Stock Exchange yesterday.

 

Employees in the bank's outlets will be regrouped so that they each take charge of customers, products and industries, the nation's first privately-owned bank said.

 

"The restructuring can help develop the bank's potential and raise its efficiency," said Liu Xiaochang, a Huatai Securities Co analyst. "The effort can enhance its core competition ability and profitability in the long term," Liu said.

 

Shares of Minsheng grew 1.68 percent to end at 14.52 yuan in Shanghai yesterday.

 

The bank, the country's seventh-largest lender by market value, plans to acquire up to 20 percent of UCBH Holdings Inc in its first overseas expansion and it is still waiting regulatory approval.

 

UCBH, the biggest bank serving the Chinese community in the United States, runs 70 branches on the east and west coasts of that country.

 

Minsheng reported a 70-percent profit growth of 4.3 billion yuan in the first nine months of this year on more loans granted and demand for wealth-management services.

 

The Chinese government has asked banks to cap lending growth at 15 percent this year on concern that loans are used illegally to fund stock purchases.

 

The central bank has raised the reserve ratio 10 times this year to 14.5 percent, the highest in at least 20 years, to restrain lending and excess liquidity.

 

(Shanghai Daily December 20, 2007)