Asia-focused bank Standard Chartered Plc. will use a stake in a new Chinese bank to open dozens more branches in the fast-growing market and it is seeking further acquisitions, a senior executive said on Saturday. Tianjin-based Bohai Bank, in which Standard Chartered has a one-fifth stake, could open its first branch this year, kicking off a speedy expansion around China, said Peter Sullivan, the chief executive of Standard Chartered's Hong Kong unit.
"Our plan is to have an opening before the end of this year. It will have one branch in Tianjin to start with and then we'll expand from there," Sullivan told Reuters on the sidelines of the Boao forum, an annual economic conference on China's tropical Hainan island.
"We would have tens of branches over the next five years provided the regulators allow us to do that," said Sullivan, who headed the bank's Africa operations from London before taking up the Hong Kong post in December.
He said Standard Chartered paid around $120 million to buy its stake in Bohai Bank, whose other owners include a state-owned conglomerate linked to Tianjin Economic-Technological Development Area (TEDA) that has no experience in banking.
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