Bank of China planning HK bourse listing
(AP)
Updated: 2005-12-30 07:17

Bank of China will apply to list its shares on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange early next year, the China Securities Journal reported Thursday.

The long-anticipated move follows the approval of a purchase of a 5 percent stake in the bank by the Singaporean government investment company Temasek Holdings, the report said.

A pedestrian walks past a branch of Bank of China. [newsphoto/file]

"Preparations for listing application materials have been completed and the bank will submit its listing application to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in early 2006," the report cited an unidentified source at the bank as saying.

The Beijing-based Caijing Magazine reported this week that the government-owned Central Huijin Investment, Bank of China's controlling shareholder, had signed off on the bank's plan to sell a 5 percent stake to Temasek for an undisclosed sum.

A Bank of China spokesman, Wang Zhaowen, said he had no comment on the China Securities Journal report or its contents, or about Temasek's bid. However, he confirmed that the bank was preparing its application for a listing in Hong Kong.

Central Huijin earlier rejected a bid by Temasekfor a 10 percent stake in the Chinese lender. The reasons for its objections have not been disclosed, though Caijing reported that Finance Ministry officials argued the price offered for the bank's shares was too low.

China's central bank created Central Huijin in 2004 as a state investment vehicle. Central Huijin has since injected more than $60 billion into Bank of China, China Construction Bank and the Industrial & Commercial Bank of China to help replenish their capital after the state-owned commercial banks disposed of billions of dollars in bad loans.

China's banks are restructuring and listing shares overseas, hoping to build up their competitiveness as they brace for the full opening of the country's banking industry to foreign competition late next year.

China Construction Bank raised $8 billion in October in the world's biggest initial public offering this year.

Bank of China's IPO is scheduled to be followed by a share listing by the Industrial & Commercial Bank of China, or ICBC, in 2007.

The potential sizes of those initial public offerings have not been disclosed. But Caijing's report said Bank of China's IPO was not likely to exceed that of BOC Hong Kong (Holdings), the Beijing-based bank's Hong Kong unit. It raised $2.7 billion in a Hong Kong IPO in July 2002.