ICBC: Niu’s new bank?
The hype surrounding Industrial and Commercial Bank of China’s $19.1 billion initial public offering last month didn’t disappoint: Investors scrambled for a piece of the world’s biggest-ever share issue. But many investors are still wondering exactly what they bought.
The bank’s head of credit control, Niu Ximing, went to the heart of the matter during a road show appearance in Hong Kong shortly before the IPO. A massive restructuring of ICBC and its troubled loan book had created a “completely different” bank, he contended. Niu unveiled figures showing that only 1.86 percent of all loans made since 1999, when the restructuring began, were nonperforming. That would mark a stunning turnaround for a bank that just two years ago reported 21.2 percent of all loans as nonperforming, and needed the government to take 635 billion yuan ($77 billion)...
