NEW YORK, (Reuters) – China Construction Bank (CCB) <0939.HK>, the world’s second-biggest bank by market value, would like to set up branch offices in fellow BRIC nations Brazil, India and Russia, its chairman Guo Shuqing said yesterday.
He also said that CCB last week signed a memorandum of understanding that is expected to lead to an agreement to provide U.S. conglomerate General Electric Co. <GE.N> with banking services in China and for cross-border financing.
And Guo said in an interview he would be “delighted” if relations between China and Taiwan warm enough for state-controlled CCB to be allowed to set up a branch franchise on the island.
Guo, who attended ceremonies in the past week to mark CCB’s establishment of a subsidiary in London and a branch in New York, said that altogether the bank may add about 10 branches around the world in the next three years.
Next on its list are upgrading a representative office in Sydney, Australia into a branch, and setting up a bank in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
But he made it clear that the bank, whose second-largest shareholder is Bank of America <BAC.N> with about 11 percent of its H shares, is going to remain almost 100 percent focused on China or those who want to do business with China.
He said that he expects further rationalization in the finance sectors in the U.S. and Europe, and he is still concerned about the potential impact of further house price weakness and the rising jobless rate on U.S. banks.
“I think that in the developed countries, the financial sector is overdeveloped, there is overbanking,” he said, adding that in both employment and output he expected the sector to play a significantly smaller role in the future.
