China's top bank makes foray into India

Chinese leading bank Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) Thursday announced the formal operation of its first branch in India, as one of its latest move to realize internationalization. This also marks the first branch from Chinese mainland's banking sector in India with several Indian banks already operating in China. Yang Kaisheng, president of ICBC said, "The establishment of ICBC's maiden branch here indicates its commitment to building up the commercial bridge between India and China." "I'm confident with Indian economic and social development and we're willing to cooperate with local peers", Yang said at a press conference. Yang added, ICBC's branch in Mumbai will be a small-sized bank for a long time and I hope Indian banks see us as a business partner rather than a competitor. The increasingly closer relationship between China and India in terms of trade investment provides a sound basis of development for ICBC in India and the whole financial sector at large, said a press statement by ICBC. The Mumbai branch will focus on corporate banking in the beginning and mainly serve Chinese companies and their local partners, said Yang. In the future, the business will be expanded to private, personal and investment banking providing service to local clients. ICBC will provide credit support for Indian telecommunication, transportation, power and other infrastructure sectors like heavy machinery and automobile, according to the statement. Yang also said that ICBC would like to provide RMB-denominated loans to India clients in compliance with the regulations with Indian and Chinese banking regulators. The business size of the Mumbai branch will depend on its own asset size and its capacity on risk control, said Yang, stressing the "step by step" manner to be adopted. Yang said, the overseas assets hopefully could account for about 10 percent of ICBC's overall assets in the medium term, up from around 4 percent share of overseas assets among total assets for the time being. IBCB is world's largest bank in term of market capitalization, profit and customer deposit and has 2.3 trillion U.S. dollars of total assets by the end of June with the share of non-performing loans at 0.95 percent. ICBC now has around 220 overseas branches in 30 countries and regions with 104 billion U.S. dollars of overseas assets.