Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), China's biggest lender in terms of assets, could raise about US$12 billion in an initial public offering ahead of its listing in Hong Kong later this year, a news report said on Tuesday.

 

A Xinhua-run newspaper quoted insiders as reporting that ICBC would allocate 25 percent of the new shares for a number of elite and well-known Hong Kong institutions.

 

ICBC Chairman Jiang Jianqing said one week ago that he expected the bank, by stock market value, to become one of the world's top 10 banks, with 2006 business profits exceeding 100 billion yuan (US$12.5 billion).

 

ICBC was transformed into a joint-stock company in October. Months later, a foreign trio of Goldman Sachs, American Express and Allianz Group paid a combined US$3.78 billion for a 8.89 percent stake in the bank, the largest-ever amount of foreign investment in China's banking industry.

 

Chinese banks have piled up a mountain of problem debts over the past decades due to reckless lending to state-owned enterprises, sapping their competitiveness, analysts acknowledge.

 

They have been working to shed hefty bad debts, push forward joint-stock reform, attract foreign investors, try to secure stock market listings and take other measures to help streamline operations in advance of the full opening of China's financial markets to foreign rivals by the end of this year.

 

Bank of China has kicked off an IPO in Hong Kong, the world's biggest in six years, by raising an equivalent of US$9.7 billion. It will begin public trading next Thursday.

 

(Xinhua News Agency May 31, 2006)