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Commonwealth Bank opens first Chinese branch

By Zhou Yan (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-03-27 09:20

SHANGHAI - Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA), the largest lender by market capitalization in Australia, opened its first Chinese branch in Shanghai on Friday, with an eye on the ballooning natural resources trade between the two countries.

"Our new branch's initial focus will be on corporate customers by providing our particular expertise in the natural resources, infrastructure financing, and structure asset finance industries," said Ian Saines, group executive of CBA.

The Sydney-based bank is only allowed to operate wholesale business in non-local currency for the first three years in China subject to the nation's regulatory policies.

"We'll apply for a license to do personal banking business in renminbi after three years," Saines said.

The Australian lender expects the new branch in Shanghai to turn a profit "very quickly", and will not roll out in other Chinese cities for at least three years.

"It (geographical expansion) will be very much dependent on our business performance in Shanghai," said Simon Blair, CBA's group executive for international financial services.

CBA's first representative office in China, set up in 1992 in Beijing, is not in the pipeline to be upgraded to a branch at present, according to the company.

China is Australia's largest trading partner with A$83 billion ($75.32 billion) in bilateral trade in 2009, in which mineral and energy exports to China were worth more than A$33 billion, according to Martin Ferguson, Australia's resources minister.

Compared with CBA's quite conservative expansion approach in China, rival Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Ltd (ANZ), the nation's fourth-largest lender, opened its first Chinese branch in Shanghai as early as 1997.

And it also upgraded representative offices in Beijing and Guangzhou to branch status in 1997 and 2009 respectively.