The China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC) has approved the appointment of John Langlois and Jeffrey Williams to lead the Shenzhen Development Bank, the Shenzhen-listed bank announced on Friday.

Langlois, a former Morgan Stanley banker in China, will represent Newbridge Asia AIV as the chairman of the Shenzhen-based lender. Newbridge, a US-based investment fund, became the bank's biggest shareholder at the end of last year, taking up a 17.89 percent stake in the bank at a price of 1.24 billion yuan (US$149.7 million).

Williams, who had helped Citibank launch its first mainland branch in Shenzhen in 1988 and then ran Standard Chartered's Taiwan operations between 1999 and 2002, will become the president of Shenzhen Development Bank.

He is the first foreigner to become president of a Chinese bank.

Shenzhen Development Bank first announced the recruitment of the two foreign bankers last December following a drastic reshuffle of its 10-member board. That introduced five new members from Newbridge, although those appointments become official only with the recent approval of China's banking regulators.

The bank had 198.8 billion yuan (US$24.1 billion) of assets by the end of last September, although it also had liabilities of 194.5 billion yuan (US$23.5 billion).

Negotiations with Newbridge on the sale were shelved in 2003 due to disagreements, but the two sides came together again early last year and won the CBRC's approval for the deal in September.

(China Daily April 2, 2005)