CCB to launch world's biggest IPO
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2005-10-10 20:56

China's banks have long struggled with severe debt problems, a major hangover from the country's central planning days when easy credit was granted without concern about repayment of the loans.

CCB would be the first of China's big four state-owned banks --which includes Bank of China, the Agricultural Bank of China and the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China -- to list shares overseas.

In December 2003, the CCB and Bank of China received 22.5 billion dollars each from the central government to tidy up their balance sheets.

Regulators hope that pushing state banks to go public will bring greater transparency to the sector.

In 2004, CCB's pre-tax profits reached 50.22 billion yuan (6.19billion dollars). Its capital adequacy ratio, being a measure of its available capital in proportion to its outstanding loans, reached 11.29 percent -- significantly above the international 8 percent requirement.