PRC Investment Banks
April 28th, 2004FinanceAsia.com has a story here about China International Trust and Investment Corp. (CITIC).
China currently mandates separation between banking, insurance and securities companies, but there is discussion of relaxing this requirements in pending revisions to the 1998 Securities Law so that there may be more firms like CITIC (originally an “international trust and investment company,” which is one of the “non-bank financial institutions” now regulated by the China Banking Regulatory Commission).
Another prominent PRC investment banking operation is China International Capital Corp. (CICC). It is only a securities company, with no direct insurance or commercial banking operations like CITIC.
CICC was established as a joint venture between China Construction Bank and Morgan Stanley under special approvals long before China’s regulations on foreign investment in securities companies were promulgated in response to China’s WTO accession terms. Given its success, CCB and Morgan Stanley must be very glad they established CICC.
Levin Zhu, Carl Walter and his co-author Frazier Howie and a number of other noteworthy people have been associated with CICC. It’s offices are in the China World Trade Center in Beijing in the same tower where I used to work as a lawyer.