Banking News
- Sharp business growth in foreign banks
Date: 20-Aug-2007 Sources: (Shenzhen Daily)
OVERSEAS banks incorporated on the Chinese mainland have mostly recorded sharp growth in both business scales and profits, according to their newly released half-year reports.
HSBC's deposits and total assets on the mainland rose 50 percent and 26 percent, respectively, while its pre-tax profit rose 69 percent to US$473 million.
Standard Chartered doubled its business income on the mainland, with pre-tax profit rising 30 percent to US$1.98 billion.
Hang Seng Bank's loans and deposits went up 50.4 percent and 93.9 percent, respectively, and its pre-tax profit from the mainland accounted for 5.9 percent of its total, higher than the 4.3 percent recorded in the same period last year.
An analysis on Saturday's Shanghai Securities News attributed the good business performance to these banks' traditional financing advantages. Statistics show that the number of their individual financing clients have risen by 35 percent to nearly 60 percent.
Guo Tianyong, director of the China Banking Research Center under the Central University of Finance and Economics, said that foreign-funded banks are sharp in finding market demands, and are able to quickly respond to the demands by launching new financial products.
At the same time, overseas banks are also quick in adding new branches, extending their presence from big cities to mid-sized cities. Standard Chartered will have 40 outlets in 15 cities by the end of this year, while the Bank of East Asia has set up 13 branches and 24 sub-branches in Wuhan, Nanjing and other cities.
The analysis said that compared with Chinese banks, foreign-funded banks pay more attention to medium and small enterprise loans and private banking business. In addition, they also have clear advantages in capital market businesses, most of them have made a big fortune from securities brokerage businesses in the first half of this year.
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