Central China city commercial bank renamed, plans expansion

WUHAN, June 25 (Xinhua) -- The Wuhan Urban Commercial Bank in central China's Hubei Province renamed itself the Hankou Bank on Wednesday, part of a plan to attract overseas strategic investors and list on the stock market.

The 11-year-old bank would try to "follow the financial tradition" of Hankou, a famous Chinese financial center in the early 20th century, the bank said in a statement. Hankou, now part of Wuhan, the capital of Hubei, had about 300 Chinese and foreign banks and insurance companies at that time.

The stockholding bank, headquartered in Wuhan, will open its first two branches outside the city during the second half of the year and plans to launch operations outside Hubei next year, it said.

The bank now has 89 branches in Wuhan.

Bank president Zhang Chao said his bank would "mainly provide services to private and small or medium-sized firms, as well as individuals."

"We expect the bank to give strong financial support to Wuhan's economic development," said Ruan Chengfa, mayor of Wuhan.

Zhang said the bank would "lose no time" in following the examples of the Bank of Beijing, the Bank of Nanjing and the Bank of Ningbo, all of which used to be city-level commercial banks but were renamed and went public last year.

The Hankou Bank raised 2 billion yuan (289 million U.S. dollars) last year by selling shares to 37 institutional investors.

Hankou Bank had 36.98 billion yuan in total assets at the end of last year. Its capital adequacy ratio was 12.2 percent, compared with the 8 percent minimum required by Chinese banking regulators.