News

Five Chinese commercial banks were found to have misallocated 58 billion yuan or 8.9 billion U.S. dollars of policy loans. This was revealed by the head of the National Audit Office, Liu Jiayi. Liu said that various policy-based financial institutions have been following the country's policies to make their own loan plans and boost operation and risk-prevention abilities but problems still exist in loans and insurance services. These financial institutions cited include China Life Insurance Company, Property and Casualty Company Limited and the five commercial banks, China Construction Bank, Bank of China, Agricultural Bank of China, the Bank of Communications and the ICBC. Among the policy loans misused, 25.4 billion yuan was granted to projects that lacked sufficient capital funds or bypassed approval procedures. Auditing of China Life and PICC's 499 branches revealed that some of these branches used false insurance claims and payments to steal insurance funds that totaled 1.99 billion yuan. According to Liu, related financial institutions have rectified 18.5 billion yuan involved in illegal management, and another 84.79 million yuan was recovered or collected as taxes. The full story is availabled at xinhua.

CCB plans to sell shares of the company with largest rare earth production and research base in China with appraised value of $110.48mn.

The lender woos 2,500 of the country’s affluent to avail Priority Banking Program composed of competent wealth managers.

The protest of about 3,000 union members against a scheme determining compensation based on individual performance comes as the lender struggles to compete with local rivals.

The lender is currently ready to distribute mutual funds is already in talks with fund management companies about possible cooperation.

Inclusion of Bank of Rajasthan’s 450 branches into the network comprises a huge fraction of additional branches.

Delay resulted from growing volatility in global markets even as the lender planned to price deal on July 8.

ICBC is the fourth Chinese bank with which First Bank had signed an MOU for overseas expansion. 

Bank of Singapore aims to tap the growing number of affluent Chinese and Indians by establishing local offices in their respective countries.

The lender is to set up five fully automated branches in Tamil Nadu to address the growing need for electronic banking.

An additional 1% surcharge would also be imposed if a bank becomes significantly bigger, according to Reuters.

AndaraLink offers 40mn Indonesians access to financial services via mobile terminals.

The Royal Bank of Scotland says there is risk of a financial crisis after an extended period of ultra-loose monetary conditions in Hong Kong.

RHB Capital Bhd may revisit a potential merger with AMMB Holdings Bhd after failed deals with CIMB and Maybank.

Maybank pulled out of negotiations for the purchase of RHB Capital because of the prohibitive price.

PGBank raised its total deposits in 2010 to 13.995 trillion dong, based on its recently released 2010 annual reports.