BANK of East Asia is the first overseas lender to express a strong intention to help private investors directly trade Hong Kong shares via mainland accounts, a senior bank official said yesterday.

Aiming to muscle its way into the business, the lender has set up a team to study the trial program and plans to submit an application to regulators once the service is opened to overseas banks, said Lam Chi Man, executive vice president of Bank of East Asia (China) Ltd, yesterday.

"We expect the business to be opened to more players within months as other trial programs have shown," said Lam.

The State Administration of Foreign Exchange on August 20 approved the trial program to allow private investors to trade Hong Kong shares directly via mainland accounts with Bank of China in Tianjin.

BOC is due to first launch the direct Hong Kong shares investment services in four wealth management centers in Tianjin this week and then expand the service to 40 major cities including Beijing and Shanghai.

Other banks including Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, China Construction Bank and Bank of Communications are expected to jump onto the bandwagon for the so-called "Hong Kong shares express" business.

Hong Kong-based BEA will also set up a private banking unit this year in Shanghai to attract the country's growing number of millionaires. The private banking unit will have capital of about US$1 million. The business will later expand to other cities like Beijing, Guangzhou and Chengdu, Lam said.

The lender has similar private banking units in the special administrative region for more than a decade and affluent people on the Chinese mainland are more familiar with the investment market in Hong Kong compared with other overseas markets.

Other banks vying for the super rich clients in the private banking business include BOC, China Merchants Bank, China Citic Bank and overseas rivals like Citi and BNP Paribas.

The Chinese mainland last year was home to 345,000 people who had a net worth of US$1 million, up from 320,000 in 2005, said a report by Capgemini SA and Merrill Lynch & Co.