• Home
• /
• Business

China biggest bank opens branch in Abu Dhabi

ABU DHABI — The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China or ICBC, which is world largest bank by market capitalisation, opened its new Abu Dhabi Branch to capitalise on growing trade relations between the UAE and China, Asia’s largest economy.

The Bank’s third branch in the Middle East region will further enhance the Sino-Middle East banking cooperation already established through ICBC’s existing subsidiary within the Dubai International Financial Centre as well as its branch within the Qatar Financial Centre.

The opening ceremony held the other day was attended by Dr Shaikh Sultan bin Khalifa Al Nahyan, member of the Abu Dhabi Executive Council, China’s Ambassador to the UAE Gao Yusheng and over 300-businessmen, bankers and government officials.

ICBC was awarded a commercial banking license by the Central Bank of UAE in December 2009.

“The license is the first of such license awarded to a Chinese Bank in the UAE and will enable ICBC to provide more comprehensive financial services to its existing commercial and institutional clients in funding local and regional projects, Chinese officials said.

The license will play a major role in assisting more potential Chinese companies to expand and invest into this region.

Besides, ICBC is also looking to encourage economic investment into China as recently witnessed through the Sino-Abu Dhabi Economic Forum held in conjunction with the Abu Dhabi Department of Economic Development in May 2010 at Shanghai, an official at the ceremony said.

The launch ceremony was attended by 300-businessmen, bankers and government officials.

Yang Kaisheng, Vice Chairman and President of ICBC in speaking on the occasion said his bank is the largest bank in China, and number one in the world in terms of market cap, customer deposits and profit.

“We have more than 16,000 outlets in China, and maintain operations in 27 countries and territories around the globe,” the ICBC’s vice chairman told the opening ceremony.

Currently ICBC boasts 4 million corporate clients and 230 million individual customers.

He said despite the global financial crisis, “we still enjoyed sound growth in 2009, with $19 billion net profit and over 20 per cent of ROE.”

“In 2010 we continue to post strong performance. By the end of September 2010, ICBC’s total assests exceeded 2 trillion US dollars,”Yang Kaisheng said.

For the first three quarters of 2010, he said ICBC’s after-tax profit increased by 27.1 per cent year on year and ROE stood at 23.76 per cent. “Our profitability still took lead globally,” the vice chairman said. He said that ICBC has operations in all five continents.

“The opening of Abu Dhabi branch represents further consolidation of our overseas reach”, he said.

The strong UAE economy has enjoyed rapid growth during recent years, making it one of the most competitive economies in the Middle East and even around the world. UAE and Chinese economies are complementary.

Both governments are positive on closer trade ties, he said.

China has overtaken Japan and USA as UAE’s biggest importer.

“UAE is also China’s largest export market in West Asia and Africa for consecutively 17 years”, said the chairman. With healthy and steady development of both economies, China and UAE share growing cooperative potential.

“The opening of ICBC Abu Dhabi branch is a good example for this growing partnership, he said.

haseeb@khaleejtimes.com