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The Industrial & Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), the nation's largest lender, does not intend seeking more foreign strategic investors ahead of a planned US$10 billion public offering.

 

"We are basically done with the introduction of foreign strategic investors," Pan Gongsheng, acting chief financial officer and head of restructuring at Beijing-based bank, said yesterday.

 

ICBC, which controls a fifth of China's US$4.6 trillion of banking assets, is the nation's most coveted lender with more than 100 million customers at 21,223 nationwide outlets.

 

Bank of America Corp, UBS AG and other financial firms have spent more than US$16 billion over the past two years expanding in China, which has passed the UK as the world's fourth-largest economy.

 

ICBC sold a combined 10 percent stake to Goldman Sachs Group Inc, Allianz AG and American Express Co for US$3.78 billion. The bank was in talks with a second group of foreign investors, president Yang Kaisheng said last year.

 

Abu Dhabi Investment Authority and Kuwait Investment Authority were in talks to buy 10 percent of ICBC for as much as US$2 billion, Bader Al-Saad, managing director of Kuwait Investment, said in January.

 

Temasek Holding Pte, the Singapore government's US$61 billion investment fund, last month agreed to cut its planned investment in the Bank of China, the nation's second-biggest lender, by half after a government shareholder opposed the original size of the investment on concern it may destabilize the banking system.

 

Pan said ICBC is now negotiating with China's Social Security Fund, which plans to buy a 10 billion yuan (US$1.2 billion) stake in the lender.

 

The social security fund, which manages US$26 billion of assets, is seeking to boost returns to increase coverage to more than 1.3 billion people as the average age of China's population rises and the cost of funding retirement benefits increases.

 

The social fund had an investment return of 3 percent in 2005, even lower than the 3.5 percent average yield of inter-bank government bonds.

 

ICBC was set up in 1984 by the government to offer deposit and lending services to state-owned companies. The bank's non-performing loan ratio fell from a high of 25.46 percent in 2000 to 2.49 percent at the end of last year.

 

ICBC last month said it will earn at least 100 billion yuan (US$12.43 billion) in operating profit this year, up from 90.2 billion yuan (US$11.21 billion) in 2005. The lender offered 283.2 billion yuan (US$35.19 billion) of syndicated loans last year, it said in a statement on Sunday.

 

(China Daily March 14, 2006)