The sale is the latest move by a mid-sized mainland lender to enter the overseas market with the help of strategic investors.

The Chongqing-based bank singed a deal yesterday to sell a 17 per cent stake to Dah Sing Bank and another 7.99 per cent stake to the Carlyle Group for about 1 billion yuan (US$128 million), according to the bank's board.

"We sold 500 million shares at 2.02 yuan (25.8 US cents) each, so the price of the stakes sold is around 1.01 billion yuan (US$128 million)," board secretary Huang Changsheng said. He added that the bank currently has a total of 2.02 billion shares.

May Yan, senior bank analyst at Moody's Asia Pacific Ltd, called Dah Sing Bank's move "very aggressive." She said she was surprised to hear the relatively small and once quiet Hong Kong lender had made such a brave acquisition.

"Dah Sing has shown interest in aggressive acquisitions recently. Like many other Hong Kong and overseas banks, Dah Sing obviously wants to tap the mainland market to expand its network," Yan told China Daily.

Yan said that previously only bigger overseas banks had been active in purchasing stakes in mainland banking groups, but now the desire to get a slice of China has reached medium size banks.

She said Moody's was still sticking with its current "intermediate" rating for Dah Sing.

The Chongqing Bank said in a statement that the stake sale was part of a series of measures aimed at transforming it into a retail-focused bank and prepare it for an initial public offering in Hong Kong in the near future.

"Chongqing Commercial Bank will acquire an advanced business philosophy, mature techniques and managerial know-how from the strategic investors, helping speed up and improve the company's development," it said.

"We will tap the advanced management methods and expertise of our strategic investors to help develop our retail business and prepare for international equity markets," it said.

The bank projects total assets of 36 billion yuan (US$4.6 billion) at the end of 2006 and an operating profit of more than 500 million yuan (US$63.9 million), with deposits of 28.5 billion yuan (US$3.6 billion) and outstanding loans of 21 billion yuan (US$2.69 billion), it said.

The capital adequacy ratio at the end of 2006 stood around 12 per cent and the non-performing loan ratio below 3 per cent.

If the deal is approved by the mainland banking authority it will be the first direct investment by Carlyle in China's banking sector. The US-based global private equity investment firm, with more than US$46.9 billion of equity capital under management, has been actively seeking investment opportunities worldwide over the last two decades.

It will follow in the footsteps of the world's leading financial service companies, such as Citigroup, Bank of America, Royal Bank of Scotland and Deutsche Bank, which have invested billions of dollars in mainland lenders.

Strategic investors have also been increasingly drawn to China's smaller city banks, assuming that they are less expensive, easier to adopt and more manageable in internal organization than the country's four big state-owned banks.

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