Agricultural Bank of China
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Agricultural Bank of China (ABC), also known as AgBank, is one of the " Big Four"
bank A bank is a financial institution that accepts deposits from the public and creates a demand deposit while simultaneously making loans. Lending activities can be directly performed by the bank or indirectly through capital markets. Because ...
s in
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. It was founded on 10 July 1951, and has its headquarters in Dongcheng District,
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. It has branches throughout
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,
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, and
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. ABC has 320 million retail customers, corporate clients, and nearly 24,000 branches. It is China's third-largest lender by assets. ABC went public in mid-2010, fetching the world's biggest ever
initial public offering An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investment ...
(IPO) at the time, since overtaken by the
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n state-run
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. In 2011, it ranked eighth among the Top 1000 World Banks, by 2015, it ranked third in Forbes' 13th annual Global 2000 list and in 2017 it ranked fifth. It is considered a
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by the
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.


History

Since the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, ABC has been formed and abolished several times. On July 10, 1951, two banks of the
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,
Farmers Bank of China A farmer is a person engaged in agriculture, raising living organisms for food or raw materials. The term usually applies to people who do some combination of raising field crops, orchards, vineyards, poultry, or other livestock. A farmer mig ...
and Cooperation Bank, merged to form the Agricultural Cooperation Bank, which ABC regards as its ancestor. However, the bank was merged into
People's Bank of China The People's Bank of China (officially PBC or informally PBOC; ) is the central bank of the People's Republic of China, responsible for carrying out monetary policy and regulation of financial institutions in mainland China, as determined by ...
, the central bank in 1952. The first bank bearing the name Agricultural Bank of China was founded in 1955, but it was merged into the central bank in 1957. In 1963 the Chinese government formed another agricultural bank which was also merged into the central bank two years later. Today's Agricultural Bank of China was founded in February 1979. It was restructured to form a
holding company A holding company is a company whose primary business is holding a controlling interest in the securities of other companies. A holding company usually does not produce goods or services itself. Its purpose is to own shares of other companies ...
called Agricultural Bank of China Limited. It was listed on the Shanghai and Hong Kong stock exchanges in July 2010. In April 2007, ABC was the victim of the largest bank theft in Chinese history. This occurred when two
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at the
Handan Handan is a prefecture-level city located in the southwest of Hebei province, China. The southernmost prefecture-level city of the province, it borders Xingtai on the north, and the provinces of Shanxi on the west, Henan on the south and Shando ...
branch of the bank in
Hebei Hebei or , (; alternately Hopeh) is a northern province of China. Hebei is China's sixth most populous province, with over 75 million people. Shijiazhuang is the capital city. The province is 96% Han Chinese, 3% Manchu, 0.8% Hui, an ...
province
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almost yuan (
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7.5 million).Suspects of China's largest bank theft go on trial
, Lin Li, ''
Xinhua News Agency Xinhua News Agency (English pronunciation: )J. C. Wells: Longman Pronunciation Dictionary, 3rd ed., for both British and American English, or New China News Agency, is the official state news agency of the People's Republic of China. Xinhua ...
'', July 24, 2007
In 2012, ABC started a project to migrate to the Avaloq Banking System. During the 2013 Korean crisis, the Agricultural Bank of China halted business with a North Korean bank accused by the United States of financing Pyongyang's missile and nuclear programs.


2010 initial public offering

ABC was the last of the " big four" banks in China to go public. In 2010, A shares and
H shares H shares () refer to the shares of companies incorporated in mainland China that are traded on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Many companies float their shares simultaneously on the Hong Kong market and one of the two mainland Chinese stock exc ...
of Agricultural Bank of China were listed on the
Shanghai Stock Exchange The Shanghai Stock Exchange (SSE) is a stock exchange based in the city of Shanghai, China. It is one of the three stock exchanges operating independently in mainland China, the others being the Beijing Stock Exchange and the Shenzhen Stock Exc ...
and the
Hong Kong Stock Exchange The Stock Exchange of Hong Kong (SEHK, also known as Hong Kong Stock Exchange) is a stock exchange based in Hong Kong. As of the end of 2020, it has 2,538 listed companies with a combined market capitalization of HK$47 trillion. It is repor ...
respectively. Each share was set to cost between 2.7
RMB The renminbi (; symbol: ¥; ISO code: CNY; abbreviation: RMB) is the official currency of the People's Republic of China and one of the world's most traded currencies, ranking as the fifth most traded currency in the world as of April 2022. ...
and 3.3RMB per share. H shares were set to cost between HK$2.88 and HK$3.48 per share. The final share price for the IPO launch was issued on July 7, 2010. On completion in August 2010 it became the world's biggest
initial public offering An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investment ...
(IPO) surpassing the one set by Industrial and Commercial Bank of China in 2006 of . This record has since been beaten by another Chinese company,
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, in 2014. ABC raised US$19.21 billion in an IPO in Hong Kong and Shanghai on July 6, 2010, before overallotment options were exercised. On August 13, 2010, ABC officially completed the world's largest initial public offering, raising a total of after both Shanghai and Hong Kong's over-allotments were fully exercised. The IPO was once thought to be able to raise , but weaker market sentiment dampened the value. Despite a 15-month low for the Chinese benchmark index, the IPO was said to have gone smoothly. CICC,
Goldman Sachs Goldman Sachs () is an American multinational investment bank and financial services company. Founded in 1869, Goldman Sachs is headquartered at 200 West Street in Lower Manhattan, with regional headquarters in London, Warsaw, Bangalore, H ...
, and
Morgan Stanley Morgan Stanley is an American multinational investment management and financial services company headquartered at 1585 Broadway in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. With offices in more than 41 countries and more than 75,000 employees, the fir ...
led the Hong Kong offering, with
JPMorgan JPMorgan Chase & Co. is an American multinational investment bank and financial services holding company headquartered in New York City and incorporated in Delaware. As of 2022, JPMorgan Chase is the largest bank in the United States, the w ...
, Macquarie,
Deutsche Bank Deutsche Bank AG (), sometimes referred to simply as Deutsche, is a German multinational investment bank and financial services company headquartered in Frankfurt, Germany, and dual-listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and the New York Sto ...
and ABC's own securities unit also involved. CICC,
CITIC Securities CITIC Securities Co., Ltd. is a Chinese full-service investment bank. It offers services in underwriting, research, brokerage, asset management, wealth management, and investment advisory. CITIC Securities was established in 1995 and it is headq ...
, Galaxy and
Guotai Junan Securities Guotai Junan Securities Co., Ltd. (GTJA) is one of the largest investment banks and securities companies in the People's Republic of China. Overview Guotai Junan Securities Co. Ltd., was established on August 18, 1999 after the merger of former ...
handled the Shanghai portion. ABC sold about 40% of the Shanghai offering to 27 strategic investors, including China Life Insurance and China State Construction. They were subject to lock-up periods of 12–18 months. Eleven cornerstone investors were selected for its Hong Kong share offering, including
Qatar Investment Authority The Qatar Investment Authority (QIA; ar, جهاز قطر للإستثمار) is Qatar's sovereign wealth fund. The QIA was founded by the State of Qatar in 2005 to strengthen the country's economy by diversifying into new asset classes. In 2021 ...
and
Kuwait Investment Authority The Kuwait Investment Authority (KIA) is Kuwait's sovereign wealth fund, managing the state’s reserve and the state’s future generation fund (FGF). Founded in 1953, the KIA is the world's oldest sovereign wealth fund. As of April 2022, it ...
, taking a combined worth of
shares In financial markets, a share is a unit of equity ownership in the capital stock of a corporation, and can refer to units of mutual funds, limited partnerships, and real estate investment trusts. Share capital refers to all of the shares of an ...
.


See also

*
Asset management in China Asset management companies in China came into being in 1998. The founding of commercial Asset management companies (AMC; ) established by the Ministry of Finance tasked with professionally managing third-party assets was a major landmark in the de ...
*
Banking in China China's banking sector had () in assets at the end of 2020. The "big four/five" state-owned commercial banks are the Bank of China, the China Construction Bank, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, and the Agricultural Bank of China, ...
** Policy banks **
List of banks in China This is a list of banks in China, including Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Macau. The central bank of the People's Republic of China is the People's Bank of China, a component of the State Council, the Central Government of China. The People's ...
*
List of companies of China Since the introduction of Chinese economic reform, economic reforms in 1978, Economy of China, China has become one of the world's List of countries by real GDP growth rate, fastest-growing major economies. , it was the world's second-largest ec ...


References


External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Agricultural Bank Of China Companies listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange Companies listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange Companies in the CSI 100 Index Chinese brands Government-owned companies of China Banks established in 1949 1949 establishments in China Companies based in Beijing H shares Systemically important financial institutions 2010 initial public offerings