China

The big four have seen their share of all local retail deposits slide from 66% in 2004 to 58% in 2011.

ICBC rolled out the pilot service of personal petty loans to meet their funding needs, providing small RMB loans for their short-term working capital.

As of the end of May 2011, Bank of China's cross-border RMB settlement transaction volume had remained the market-leading position with more than RMB 1 trillion.

The Export-Import Bank of China intends to develop into a large multinational financial institution over the next five years.

CBRC banned commercial banks to offer very high rates to attract deposits disguised as wealth management products.

The lender and its local rivals take part in global rush to set up China-focused PE funds.

The lender joins rivals in capital raising to comply with governments stricter requirements.

Under the agreement, MasterCard’s e-commerce platform will now accept China UnionPay Cards.

The new branch in the World Finance Centre in Beijing’s Central Business District is Westpac’s sixth office in the region.

ANZ, NAB, Commonwealth Bank, and Westpac are competing for pole position in Australia’s largest trading partner.

Should the listing push through it will break a three-year IPO hiatus by the nation's city commercial banks, which operate under regional rather than national licenses.

The MOU between the companies will enable them to work together towards exploring mutually beneficial solutions to innovative payment businesses.

The companies will develop payment systems for online and mobile phone transactions.

The lender seen to outclass five rivals in acquiring the company’s 66.67% stake.

Five Chinese commercial banks were found to have misallocated 58 billion yuan or 8.9 billion U.S. dollars of policy loans. This was revealed by the head of the National Audit Office, Liu Jiayi. Liu said that various policy-based financial institutions have been following the country's policies to make their own loan plans and boost operation and risk-prevention abilities but problems still exist in loans and insurance services. These financial institutions cited include China Life Insurance Company, Property and Casualty Company Limited and the five commercial banks, China Construction Bank, Bank of China, Agricultural Bank of China, the Bank of Communications and the ICBC. Among the policy loans misused, 25.4 billion yuan was granted to projects that lacked sufficient capital funds or bypassed approval procedures. Auditing of China Life and PICC's 499 branches revealed that some of these branches used false insurance claims and payments to steal insurance funds that totaled 1.99 billion yuan. According to Liu, related financial institutions have rectified 18.5 billion yuan involved in illegal management, and another 84.79 million yuan was recovered or collected as taxes. The full story is availabled at xinhua.

CCB plans to sell shares of the company with largest rare earth production and research base in China with appraised value of $110.48mn.