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China opens door wider to foreign banks
(Reuters)
Updated: 2005-12-05 20:42
Foreign banks are already allowed to offer foreign-currency business anywhere
in China. From next December, they will be allowed to offer yuan business to
anyone anywhere in China, subject to regulatory approval.
Beijing is eager to entice foreign cash and expertise into its banking
sector, which is saddled with $200 billion in bad debt.
That effort has lured billions of
dollars in investment from banks such as HSBC Holdings Plc., Citigroup
Inc.and Bank of America.
The commission said that at the end of October foreign
banks had had total assets in China of $84.5 billion, about 2 percent of all
banking assets in China. Foreign currency loans by foreign banks had been 25
percent of all foreign currency loans.
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