On November 7, 2007, the Moscow subsidiary bank of ICBC held a grand opening ceremony in Moscow, the capital of Russian, which declares the establishment of ICBC Moscow Joint-stock Company ("ICBC Moscow"). The registered capital of ICBC Moscow is 1 billion rubles, equivalent to more than 40 million dollars, as the largest investment of Chinese-funded banks in Russia. The establishment of the ICBC Moscow marks the official beginning of ICBC entering into Russian market.
The opening ceremony coincided with the closing ceremony of the Russian "China Year". And the China's Vice Premier Wu Yi, who was on her state visit in Russia, attended the opening ceremony and inaugurated the branch bank with Russian government leaders. They together witnessed this major financial exchanges and cooperation results during the period of China-Russia year.
The ICBC Moscow is located in the busiest section of Moscow business district, which is the first wholly owned subsidiary established in Russia by ICBC, occupying the forefront position of capital amount possessed by foreign banks in Russian. Supporting by the powerful fund, network and technology platform of ICBC, as a local corporation bank registered in Russia, the ICBC Moscow will fully exerts the geography advantages of locating at the center market of Russia, East Europe and Central Asia.
ICBC Moscow will provide fully functional banking services for customers trading between each other, multinational companies, financial institutions and individual customers from China, Russia and other countries speaking Russian.
In recent years, in the background of economic integration and financial globalization, tremendous demands of cross-border financial services gradually developed, accompanied by the "going out" of Chinese enterprises. So ICBC has been actively promoting transnational business strategy to speed up foreign institution distribution, expand business areas and strive to enhance the cross-border financial service capacity.
On one hand, ICBC has actively optimized the existing network distribution of overseas institutions. On the other hand, ICBC has steadily promoting the expansion of overseas institutions through applied establishment and mergers and acquisitions. Up till now, the ICBC has extended the operating agencies to 13 countries and regions all over the world, the total number of branches reaching 110 and establishing agency relationship with 1322 banks distributing in 120 countries and regions all over the world.
So ICBC has formed a global financial network services platform covering international financial center and major trading areas of China, which possesses clear structures, reasonable positioning, varied channels and efficient operations.
The relevant principal said, on the aspect of mergers and acquisitions of overseas institutions, in addition to the already opened ICBC Moscow, the mergers and acquisitions of Bank Halim Indonesia by ICBC has acquired the approval of two-country supervising institutions. ICBC had successfully completed the delivery legal procedures of 90% stake of the Bank Halim Indonesia on September 28, 2007 and officially became the controlling shareholder of the Bank Halim Indonesia, which also marked the formal establishment of ICBC Indonesia.
On August 29, 2007, ICBC signed an agreement to acquire 79.9333% stake of Seng Heng Bank by 4.683 billion patacas with the shareholder of Seng Heng Bank limited. (Seng Heng Bank). On October 25, 2007, ICBC and the South African Standard Bank Group Ltd. ("Standard Bank") reached an agreement on shares transactions and comprehensive cooperating affairs.
According to the agreement, ICBC would pay about 5.46 billion dollars acquire 20% stake of the Standard Bank, becoming the first major shareholder, and develop strategic cooperation in a wide range of areas. In addition, the applying establishment of ICBC branch institution distributing in New York, Dubai and Doha of Middle East and Sydney in Australia has been approved by China Banking Regulatory Commission and all the preparatory work is in progress.
While the ICBC continuously expands the international developing space, the overseas institutions has done a lot of useful experiment on business structure optimization, business model transformation, characteristic product innovation and other aspects and has got good business performance.
ICBC president Jiang Jianqing said that after successful listing, the reforming development of ICBC has entered into a brand new historical stage and the international operations will become one of the most important strategies. Now the assets and profits of the overseas institutions are not large compared to the overall size, occupying 3% of the overall dimensions of ICBC. From a long-term consideration, we hope that the overseas income ratio can be raised to 10%. In the future, ICBC will consider acquiring more overseas institutions and establishing more new institutions under a right chance and right site, and will continue to intensify the "going out" steps toward the strategic goal of building world-class modern financial enterprises in accordance with the ICBC developing strategy.
