Aussie ANZ eyes investing up to A$400 millions in China

Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Ltd is looking to pour up to A$400 million dollars ($308 million) into buying 20 percent stakes in two Chinese lenders, senior officials from the bank said on June 07. Australia's third-largest bank planned to spend around A$200 million on buying a maximum allowable 19.99 percent stake in Shanghai Rural Credit Co-operatives Union, with whom it has already signed a memorandum of understanding.
ANZ, which has more than 1,000 branches and acquired New Zealand's biggest bank in late 2003, was also in talks to acquire a stake in a second Chinese lender as part of its growth strategy, chief executive John McFarlane said.
"We're going through the process of talking to the regulators, the local authorities and the companies themselves," McFarlane told Reuters on the sidelines of a forum.
"We're only allowed 20 percent so we'll take 20 percent of the bank that we get," he said, referring to efforts to buy into a second Chinese bank.
China allows a single foreign investor to own no more than 20 percent of a Chinese bank's shares. Combined foreign investment is capped at 25 percent.
Both opportunities being considered by ANZ would be in the magnitude of around A$200 million dollars each, ANZ spokesman Paul Edwards told Reuters.
Due diligence still had to be completed on the commercial bank still to be formed from the co-operative union, with that potential deal more likely to be concluded in 2006 than 2005, McFarlane said.
A stake acquisition in a second Chinese lender was unlikely to be completed this year, he said.
McFarlane's vision of the bank formed from the Shanghai Rural Credit Co-operatives Union was that it would begin with commercial banking before moving into consumer activities.
"We would like to move it very quickly into consumer (banking) and that would include things like credit cards, individual borrowers and depositors," he said.
ANZ, whose staff operating out of offices in Shanghai and Beijing were engaged mostly in trade finance, planned to hire systematically in the vast country as its business there grew, he said.
China's huge growth potential was of strategic interest to the bank.