China CITIC Bank Corp Ltd, the country's seventh-largest commercial lender, began marketing its Shanghai and Hong Kong initial public offering (IPO) of 7.2 billion shares yesterday.

CITIC Bank is the second Chinese firm to list simultaneously in Hong Kong and Shanghai after the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China floated in October.

The bank plans to issue 2.3 billion A shares and 4.88 billion H shares, with a greenshoe option to exercise a 15 percent over-allotment for H shares in case of oversubscription, according to the bank's prospectus to the China Securities Regulatory Commission. The capital raised will be used to supplement the bank's capital.

The bank began its H-share roadshow in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Guangzhou yesterday. It is expected to set the issue price on April 20. The A and H shares will be priced the same after the currency exchange rate is allowed for, the bank said.

Analysts said CITIC Bank had a unique advantage over other banks because of its parent firm CITIC Group, a large state-owned company involved in the financial, real estate, information and infrastructure industries.

"It will be easy for CITIC Bank to expand the scope of its financial services in the future after government approval," said Ren Zhuang, an analyst at Industrial Securities. "It is potentially a big advantage for CITIC Bank."

CITIC Group will lower its stake in the bank's shares from 80 percent to 63.71 percent after the listing, while the two other major shareholders, CIFH and BBVA, will retain their stakes of 15.17 percent and 4.83 percent. CIFH is majority-owned by CITIC Group. BBVA is a foreign financial services provider.

The bank posted a 25 percent net profit increase to 3.86 billion yuan in 2006 from 2005. It forecast a further increase of 53 percent to 5.6 billion yuan for 2007.

"The bank's past performance is good in the retail banking business, but it still has a higher bad-loans ratio compared with other joint-stock banks," said Ren. The bank's non-performing loans ratio was 2.5 percent in 2006, higher than that of most joint-stock banks like China Merchants Bank and Shanghai Pudong Development Bank, which are under 2 percent.

The bank's outstanding personal deposits amounted to 105.9 billion yuan in 2006, ranking it second of all national commercial banks, according to the prospectus.

CITIC bank is expected to begin trading on April 27, making it the first large-cap IPO in the past two months to list on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, after Ping An of China, which began trading on March 1.

"The bank's IPO is also a sign that lots of IPOs with large capitalization may be announced in the next few months, including Bank of Communications and China Mobile," said Zhang Yidong, an analyst at Industrial Securities.

Bank of Communications will reportedly get approval to list in Shanghai by July this year.

(China Daily April 5, 2007)