China is still studying the restructuring of Agricultural Bank of China, a top banking regulator said over the weekend in Shanghai.

 

Reform procedures for the Beijing-based Agricultural Bank will follow steps taken by Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd and the two other biggest lenders, Jiang Dingzhi, a vice chairman of the China Banking Regulatory Commission, said on Saturday at a banking forum in Shanghai.

 

The government spent US$60 billion bailing out ICBC, Bank of China Ltd and China Construction Bank Corp as part of a three-step plan - bailout, attract strategic investors and IPO - to restructure its state-owned banks.

 

The market had expected the proposal on the bank's restructuring to be available in the first half of this year.

 

The bank will likely receive a substantial bailout from the central government in the second half of this year, the bank's Vice President Han Zhongqi said in February.

 

A bailout of Agricultural Bank, burdened with US$99 billion in non-performing loans, may cost China as much as US$140 billion to meet the central bank's eight percent minimum capital adequacy requirement, Bloomberg News reported earlier, citing Standard & Poor's estimates.

 

The bank's bad-loan ratio was 23.44 percent at the end of 2006. The average ratio at the country's commercial banks was 7.5 percent at the end of last year, according to the CBRC. In mature financial markets, the figure is usually less than five percent.

 

The central government decided to keep the bank as one unit rather than break it up.

 

Xiang Junbo, head of the Shanghai headquarters of the People's Bank of China and the central bank's deputy governor, will reportedly be the new president of Agricultural Bank. The move may signal the lender is increasing the pace of restructuring.

 

(Shanghai Daily July 2, 2007)