China

China's central bank just took 20 billion yuan or $3 billion out of state-owned banks by forcing them to purchase packages of central bank bills.

The National Housing Bank raised the provisioning requirement for doubtful assets up to 100% while directing housing finance companies to set aside 0.4% of the total outstanding “standard” loans as a buffer.

ICBC increased its loans to small enterprises in the Midwest and Northeast China in the first seven months from 65.6% or 155.2% respectively against beginning of the year.

At the end of June, ICBC traded over 85,000 tons of precious metal, or 3.5 times as much for the whole of 2010, and recorded a turnover of over RMB 840 billion, up 93% against 2010's. The Bank's over 3.7 million precious metal customers represented a fast growing customer base.

China’s bank regulator has urged banks to guard against risks in commercial real estate projects that have been targeted by speculative investment.

ICBC London opened the service of currency trading quotes and FX trading on behalf of the head office in Beijing.

Industrial and Commercial Bank of China and American Express are offering the CBC AE Platinum Credit Card, the first prestigious AE credit card product launched in Mainland China.

ICBC secured more than 600,000 cash management customers by end of June,  an increase of nearly 20% over the end of previous year. This allows ICBC to hold on to the top spot in domestic ranking and reinforces its "No. 1 cash management bank" in China. In response to the increasing demand of customers for global and regional cash management, ICBC being the first commercial bank in China to launch global cash management service, offers a basket of cross-border cash management services to multinational corporate clients worldwide through its independently developed global cash management service system and a global network of branches and correspondent banks. Today, ICBC has built an extensive network of 16,000+ banking offices in China, 220 overseas subsidiaries and 1,516 corresponding banks in 134 countries. Besides, ICBC steps up its effort in forming partnership with other banks. Service scope is expanded via the cash management cooperation with 20+ overseas banks. This year, ICBC set up Asia Pacific Cash Management Center in Hong Kong in an effort to innovate the delivery of cash management service, especially moving the global cash management service to regional for faster response and collaboration. This new service architecture in Asia Pacific places ICBC's head office, regional center and overseas subsidiaries under one roof. The ICBC executive also pointed out that more and more companies start to focus on the liquidity management and risk management worldwide, and exercise more control on the funds operation in a Group. This offers a good opportunity for ICBC to loom large its cash management business. In the next phase, ICBC remains customer-focused.

ICBC secured its leading market position by having 9,520,000 personal pension accounts under management, RMB 43.5 billion of pension fund under trust and RMB 174.3 billion of pension fund under custody by end of June.

Agricultural Bank of China issued the Construction Plan on the 'Sannong' or farmers-agriculture-countryside credit policy system.

Bank of China and Taiwan-based Hua Nan Bank and Chang Hwa Bank entered into the comprehensive business cooperation agreements.

ICBC announced after-tax profit in the first half of 2011 of RMB 109.6 billion, up 29% year-on-year.

ICBC registered RMB 3 trillion of assets under custody in the first half of 2011, ranking first among Chinese banks for 13th consecutive year.

Deposits in the Development Bank of Singapore Deposits also grew by 90%.

Moody's Corporation now has an ownership stake of about 16.7% of the Company.

China's bank lending quickened to 548.5 billion yuan or $86 billion in August, topping market expectations of 500 billion yuan and rebounding from July's seven-month low.