ICBC
ICBC’s collaboration with banks and institutions in southeast Asia makes it the standout as Asiamoney’s best Chinese bank in southeast Asia for this year’s New Silk Road Finance Awards.
ICBC, which is China’s largest bank in terms of assets, has the most renminbi clearing banks in southeast Asia and is the sole RMB clearing bank in Singapore.
In 2015, ICBC opened up a renminbi clearing house in Thailand as well as a new branch in Yangon, Myanmar’s business centre.
Now that China’s Belt and Road Initiative is well under way, both Thailand, one of the region’s rising stars, and Myanmar, which has only relatively recently opened up to international investment, will benefit from the use of RMB in cross-border trade and investment alongside the increasing popularity of the renminbi in the world currency market.
In the capital markets, ICBC, along with BNP Paribas, Credit Suisse, Hong Leong Bank and RHB Bank Berhad in Malaysia, are working on the initial public offering of Malaysian-Chinese firm Edra Energy on the Malaysian stock exchange, which is expected to go ahead in November.
Edra is the second-largest independent power project in Malaysia and a leading nuclear energy company globally. As it stands, the company is fully owned by China General Nuclear Power Corp (CGN), but the listing is expected to attract a number of Malaysian investors.
Another project worth noting is ICBC’s collaboration with media group Singapore Press Holdings: in September 2016 they developed southeast Asia’s first bilingual B2B e-commerce platform to enhance cross-border trade between China and southeast Asia. This unique project aims to provide one-stop B2B services to business enterprises in China, Singapore and other southeast Asian countries.