Investors who regard Chinese banks as proxy investments to tap into the country's recent 10 percent annual economic growth have flooded into Chinese bank listings since lenders began selling shares in Hong Kong in 2005.

Last year's US$21.9 billion Hong Kong and Shanghai IPO by ICBC was the world's largest.

CITIC Bank said it had appointed China International Capital the lead underwriter for the IPO and CITIC Securities the offer's financial adviser.

For its Shanghai issue, the bank planned to place A shares worth around 3 billion yuan ($388 million) to strategic investors and place 6.9 billion shares, or no more than one third of the Shanghai issue, to ordinary institutional investors. The remaining shares would be sold to retail investors, it said.

Book building would kick off on Wednesday and end on April 11. Institutional subscription would last from April 16 to 19 and retail subscription would be conducted on April 19, it said.

Institutional money frozen in the subscription would be freed on April 23 and retail money would be unfrozen on April 24.

CITIC Bank said its net profit rose 25 percent to 3.86 billion yuan in 2006 from 3.08 billion yuan the previous year under international accounting standards. Outstanding loans rose 27 percent on the year to 453.38 billion yuan at the end of 2006.

Its capital-adequacy ratio stood at 9.41 percent at end-2006, up from 8.11 percent a year ago. The non-performing loan ratio fell to 2.45 percent from 4.14 percent.

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