Bank of China sets up commodity business center in London

Bank of China announces the establishment of the Commodity Business Centre (London) on Thursday. Provided to China Daily

Bank of China announced the establishment of the Commodity Business Centre in London on Thursday.

"The establishment of the Bank of China Commodity Business Centre in London is a significant step in the development of the Chinese national strategy, an important step in the execution of BOC's international strategy, and represents further steady progress of our commodities business global layout after the establishment of the Singapore and Shanghai Centre's," Yue Yi, the executive vice president of Bank of China, said.

China has become the world's biggest buyer of commodities, many Chinese state-owned and private enterprises have become active participants in international commodity trading.

Bank of China plans to set up commodity business centre in Shanghai, Singapore, London and New York to manage its commodity business globally.

The bank has already set up the Singapore and Shanghai Commodity Business Centres, which initially completed the strategic layout of the commodity business in the Asia-Pacific region.

With the establishment of the London Centre as a regional specialised commodity business centre, it will complete its strategic layout in Europe and the Middle East. The BOC Commodity Centre (London) is building its product capabilities, benefiting from London's advantage of commodity trading and capital markets, legal environment and professionals. The bank hopes to promote the integration of the commercial bank and investment bank of BOC group, and also to provide comprehensive products to commodity traders all over the world.

In the future, BOC will continue to increase the human resource and financial input, to accelerate the internationalisation process.

Chinese Ambassador to the UK, Liu Xiaoming, Economic Secretary to the Treasury, Andrea Leadsom, the President of Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), the COO of London Metal Exchange (LME) and over 40 specialists in the commodity industry attended the launch ceremony.

So far BOC London Branch has provided financial services to over 40 international commodity traders, more than half of them are members of the Forbes 500 list of the world's leading companies.