Chinese Bank buys majority stake in Citi

OK, I made that up.  Mind you, I made it up in 2006 when I presented at the BAI Retail Delivery Show.  My logic was based upon the inevitable march of Asia's tigers, and the fact that ICBC had just listed and suddenly became one of the top 10 banks in the world.

October 26th 2006: The largest IPO the world has ever seen took place when Industrial & Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) sold shares. The $19 billion sale dwarfed the $12 billion raised from 53 IPOs in the second half of 2006 on Wall Street. After the first day of trading, the Chinese lender had a market value of about $157 billion which made it worth more than Goldman Sachs Group and Lehman Brothers Holdings put together, and within striking distance of JPMorgan Chase.

Based upon such trends, my prediction was that four of the top ten banks of the world would be Chinese before the end of the decade and that, at some point soon, they would expand beyond Asia into global banks with global presence, for example by buying a big US Bank.

All of this went down real bad with the US audience, who haven't invited me back since.

Shame, particularly as many of those wild ideas have come or are coming true. 

So now I ask: “Will there come a day when the largest, strongest banks are all Asian?”

To answer that question, my good fried Emmanuel Daniel, founder of the Asian Banker, will speak at the FSClub on 23rd March on this very subject.

Emmanuel will profile the following:

• trends in the internationalisation of Asian banks today;
• where Asian banks are today in terms of operations, business, technology and risk configurations;
• Asian responses to global initiatives such as Basel II and the Financial Stability Board;
• the ability of Asian businesses in general to build regional and global models; and
• the place for Asian financial institutions in a global scenario of banking players in the next 10 years.

Emmanuel Daniel is the founder of The Asian Banker.

The Asian Banker is the foremost provider of strategic business intelligence on the financial services industry in the Asia Pacific and Middle East region with offices in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Beijing and Dubai, as well as representatives in Shanghai, London and New York.

This meeting will take place at 6.30pm on 23 March 2010, Institute of Directors, 35 New Broad Street, EC2.  If
you would like to attend, just register.