China Construction Bank
The Belt and Road Initiative is a political project as much as it is an economic or a financial one – but it has also become China’s big globalization play, a concerted attempt to redraw the rules of global trade in its own image and to its own benefit. There were many worthy candidates for this award, including China Development Bank and Bank of China.
But no one deserves this prize more than China Construction Bank (CCB), which is putting together a Rmb100 billion ($15 billion) fund that will invest directly in BRI projects.
From 2015, when the Beijing-based lender first began to focus on the Belt and Road Initiative, to the end of March 2017, CCB channelled financial support to 50 large projects worth $9.8 billion, scattered across 18 countries along the BRI trail.
The list includes several infrastructure projects in the $46 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. And CCB has another 200 BRI-related energy, shipping, power, roads and railway projects in the pipeline, spanning 40 countries and slated to cost $110 billion.
CCB is bringing all of its growing expertise to bear here, offering project financing, financial leasing, export credit and cross-border M&A advisory, and working in tandem with a host of global lenders.
It is setting up new offices across south Asia.
“CCB has constructed a well-built service network for the Belt and Road,” the bank says. It’s hard to disagree.