Banking reform enters a key stage after the Bank of China is listed in Hong Kong 　　
　　KEEN INTEREST: The Bank of China’s share offering receives a warm reception from Hong Kong investors
　　Shares of the Bank of China, the country’s second-largest lender, began trading in Hong Kong on June 1, making it the second among China’s four largest state-owned commercial banks to go public.
　　The Beijing-based bank’s stock rose a greater-than-expected 15 percent on its first day of trading in Hong Kong, despite the recent poor stock market performance. The shares finished the day at HK$3.40, above the offering price of HK$2.95, which exceeded analysts’ earlier predictions of a 5-6 percent rise.
　　The Bank of China raised $9.7 billion through the sale of almost 25.57 billion shares after pricing its initial public offering (IPO) near the top of its indicated range of HK$2.50-$3 per share. This is the world’s biggest stock offering since 2000.
　　The heavily oversubscribed offering, which investors view as a means to tap into China’s surging economic growth, will expand to $11.1 billion with the exercise of an over-allotment, or “greenshoe,” option.
　　The state-run bank’s share sale, which will be the world’s fourth-largest with the exercise of the over-allotment provision, tops the $9.2 billion raised in October by rival China Construction Bank to make it the nation’s largest.
　　The IPO of China Construction Bank, the mainland’s biggest property lender, was the largest in five years worldwide. Strong demand for the IPO boosted its share price by about 50 percent.
　　The warm investor reception to the Bank of China deal, despite recently choppy markets, paves the way for the IPO later this year of the country’s biggest lender, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, which aims to raise roughly $12 billion.
　　The deal attracted orders worth $152 billion, with the retail portion subscribed 76 times and the institutional portion covered 12 times.
　　The Bank of China attracted retail orders worth HK$291 billion, making it Hong Kong’s most popular IPO yet. As a result, the retail portion was increased to 10 percent of the IPO, the world’s largest for a financial institution, from 5 percent.
　　Professor Liu Fuxiang of the University of International Business and Economics said the Bank of China’s listing means the country’s banking reform is being pushed in-depth.
　　If China Construction Bank’s listing in Hong Kong is a test of the market, then the Bank of China’s success has reinforced the country’s confidence to proceed with the reform. The country’s banking reform can’t be delayed any longer as the financial sector must be completely opened to foreign competitors in 2007, experts pointed out.
　　
　　Step by step
　　
　　The bank’s reform is proceeding according to Xiao Gang’s expectations. Xiao, Chairman of the Bank of China, said he hopes that his bank can become the model for the four largest state banks.
　　According to the plans of the China Banking Regulatory Commission, the state-owned commercial banks should first dispose of their non-performing loans, then reorganize to become joint-stock limited companies not totally owned by the government. Third, they must draw domestic and overseas strategic investment. The fourth step is to go public, and then improve incentive mechanisms. Finally, the government will recoup its investment and gradually give up owning shares in the banks.
　　The state commercial banks started to reform in the early 1990s. During this process, the government repeatedly transferred an enormous volume of the banks’ non-performing loans to financial asset management companies, so as to pave the way for their reform.
　　According to Jiang Dingzhi, Vice Chairman of the China Banking Regulatory Commission, China issued 270 billion yuan in special bonds in 1998 to replenish the Big Four banks’ capital. One year later, non-performing loans worth nearly 1.4 trillion yuan were peeled off from the Big Four, which includes the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, China Construction Bank, Agricultural Bank of China and the Bank of China. In 2003, $60 billion of foreign reserves were injected into the Bank of China, China Construction Bank and the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China. Meanwhile, the government peeled off the banks’ loans in the “doubtful” category and provided preferential policies in taxes.
　　As the non-performing loan rates of China Construction Bank and the Bank of China are lower than the other two banks, the government selected these two banks to go public first. In 2004, the two banks completed their reorganization and began to draw strategic investment. The Bank of China was transformed into a stock limited company sponsored by Central Huijin Investment Co. China Construction Bank was split into China Construction Bank Corp. and China Jianyin Investment Ltd.
　　The hard work to overhaul the banking system, combat corruption and improve the sector’s transparency has paid off. Last October, China Construction Bank became the first of the Big Four to trade on the Hong Kong stock exchange, after an initial public offering of about $9.2 billion including the exercise of an over-allotment option. Among the investors, Bank of America acquired a 9 percent stake in China Construction Bank for $3 billion, and Asia Financial Holdings Pte. Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary of Singapore-based Temasek Holdings (Private) Ltd., signed a definitive agreement in connection with the strategic investment in Construction Bank for a 5.1 percent stake.
　　The Bank of China said late last year that it had signed strategic investment agreements with the Royal Bank of Scotland Group, the Swiss-based bank UBS, Temasek and the Asian Development Bank by October 6, 2005. The four strategic investors are expected to spend a combined $6.775 billion to buy a 21.85 percent stake in the Bank of China. Before its IPO, the Bank of China attracted 12 institutional investors.
　　Liu Mingkang, Chairman of the China Banking Regulatory Commission, said the banking sector’s reform has entered a key stage, and the next emphasis for listed banks will be on improving governance procedures.
　　He explained that listed banks must standardize the exercise of shareholders’ ownership rights, establish a directorate system to evaluate efficiency and responsibility, improve management’s leadership and strengthen supervisors’ functions.
　　Liu said going public can improve banks’ ownership structure, replenish capital, strengthen market supervision and establish a sound market image. Since the government is able to inject capital into the state commercial banks, their listing on the stock market is not merely to raise money, but to promote reform and transform the banks into real market players.
　　Yi Xianrong, a research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said the listing of state banks is not the end, but the beginning of reform. After they go public, the banks will encounter many new difficulties and problems, such as the rights and interests of ownership, corporate governance and financial reorganization. These are the key points for the successful operation of listed state banks.
　　“The state banks can’t go public just for the sake of listing on the stock market. What’s more important is to attract strategic investors, and establish and improve modern corporate governance mechanisms,” said Yi.
　　Among the Big Four, only the Agricultural Bank of China hasn’t made public its reform plans.
　　
　　Controversies arise
　　
　　But the listing of the Bank of China and China Construction Bank has also created a lot of controversy, as many believe that the banks are selling shares at too low a price.
　　If the share prices of HK$2.95 for the Bank of China and HK$2.35 for China Construction Bank are reasonable, some question why other commercial bank shares listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges in the 1990s were priced as high as dozens of yuan. If those prices are logical, then the state bank shares must have been sold at a sacrifice.
　　Shenzhen Development Bank shares were offered at 40 yuan in 1991, while those of Shanghai Pudong Development Bank were offered at 10 yuan in 1999, China Minsheng Bank at 11.8 yuan in 2000 and China Merchants Bank at 7.3 yuan in 2002.
　　Bank of China Chairman Xiao explained that as the bank’s offering price ranged from HK$2.50-$3, the price-earnings ratio per share is between 18.94 and 22.73. However, the price-earnings ratio of Bank of China (Hong Kong) Ltd., the listed Hong Kong branch of the Bank of China, was less than 15. Therefore, based on this widely used measure of the “value” of a particular stock, the offering price of the Bank of China is not cheap at all.
　　Meanwhile, others are critical of the site chosen for the Bank of China listing. “The listing of the Bank of China on the Hong Kong market is not fair to mainland investors, as we can’t buy stocks listed on that market. Blue chips going public on overseas markets will marginalize the domestic capital markets.省略.
　　Domestic investors had been hoping that the Bank of China would go public in Shanghai or Shenzhen to boost those sluggish markets. But what they saw instead was Hong Kong citizens waiting on line to get application forms for the Bank of China IPO.
　　The bank’s spokesman, Wang Zhaowen, said on May 30 there was no concrete timetable for issuing shares on the Shanghai exchange. His comment followed reports in mainland newspapers that the Bank of China planned to sell shares on the Shanghai exchange sometime in the month after the shares began trading in Hong Kong.
　　Li Liming, a commentator for The Economic Observer, said the first choice of site for state banks to go public is overseas capital markets, instead of domestic ones, as the former are better supervised and operated.
　　Meanwhile, the state banks’ listing reveals to the global banking sector that China has made considerable progress in banking reform as the banks are up to the standard of the Hong Kong exchange, one of the major stock exchanges in the world. And the Hong Kong stock exchange is viewed as much more efficient than domestic ones for its simpler approval procedures.
　　Moreover, the domestic stock markets are too small to support the massive size of either the Bank of China or China Construction Bank, while it is no problem for the Hong Kong market.

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