Bank spokesman Ren Peihua admits that eight foreign investment banks, including Morgan Stanley and BNP Paribas, have shown interest in investing in his bank. But Suzhou does not plan to sell stakes to foreign investors in the foreseeable future because its shareholders take new shares whenever the bank issues them to boost its capital, he says.
Suzhou has not yet released its 2004 financial results. By the end of 2003 its NPL ratio had fallen to 2.3% from 7.6% a year earlier. “The bank is fairly small but it has a good balance sheet. It would be good investment for getting banking experience in a booming town,” says a foreign bank official in Shanghai. The bank’s sizzling economic growth pushed pre-tax profits up by 61.4% in 2003 to Rmb51.63m.
The Suzhou bank was set up in 1997 with the merger of 16 former urban credit co-operatives. It has 28 branches in the city with total assets of Rmb10.15bn and is thus only one-third of the size of Nanjing City Commercial Bank.
Suzhou’s president and chairman, Gu Xinming, is a former central bank bureaucrat. He worked for the Suzhou branch of the People’s Bank of China from 1985 to 1997, heading its loan planning department and serving as deputy branch chief. He became chairman and president of the city bank in 1997.
