Largest Chinese bank plans coming to Brazil
Valor Econômico
The Industrial & Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), bank with the biggest market value in the world (US$ 242.1 billion), plans on coming to Brazil continuing its international expansion, said its President, Jiang Jianqing, to Valor yesterday. "We have plans to operate directly in Brazil, but how it will occur is yet to be defined", said the Chinese representative after addressing the main lecture of the spring meeting of the Association of banks, the IIF, yesterday in Vienna. The second biggest Chinese Bank, the Bank of China, will also operate in the Brazilian market. At the end of March, the Brazilian Central Bank (BC) authorized the institution to start its operations in the country.
The ICBC, on its turn, has plans to open five new branches in Europe and end the year installed in 21 countries through 108 subsidiaries. Its presence in Brazil may encourage Chinese and Asian investors in general to engage more decisively in Brazil and in the rest of Latin America. The ICBC has total assets of US$ 1.430 trillion and it is the main provider of credit in China. It is primarily controlled by the Chinese Government, but one of its minority shareholders is the American Bank Goldman Sachs, of poor reputation.
In his speech addressed in Chinese, Jianqing insisted the recovery of the world economy is far from being solid. He drew attention to several factors of uncertainty and to a long road ahead until reaching sustainable growth. For him, "the main risk in the short term is the sovereign debt crisis in Europe", and some advanced economies do not have much room for maneuvers in their policies". And he warned a laxist removal of the fiscal stimulus measures may cause a "tendency reversal in the global recovery". Like most bankers in the audience, Jianqing also showed concern with the future bank regulation. He observed the emerging countries are assuming greater relevance in the global economy and advised the other countries to learn the lessons from the experience of developing countries.