Asiamoney New Silk Road Finance Awards

In Kazakhstan, one of the key Belt and Road countries, Tsesnabank is already emerging as a leading partner for foreign and domestic companies engaged in cross-border business with China.

As the go-to house for capital markets and transaction banking in central and eastern Europe, and a market leader in Asia, Citi is ideally placed to serve companies investing along the New Silk Road. The US bank – which boasts an on-the-ground presence in the majority of the Belt and Road countries – is gearing up to take full advantage of its unique position.

State-owned ICBC and Bank of China have led the Chinese charge into central and eastern Europe. Both have already put large amounts of balance sheet to work in projects across the region, as well as laying the groundwork for a physical network along the New Silk Road.

With a strong track record of engagement in Asia, as well as coverage of key markets across CEE from Central Asia to the Balkans, VTB is ideally placed to take advantage of the Belt and Road Initiative.

HSBC was a Belt and Road bank before BRI became a buzzword. Although other global banks have made admirable efforts to refocus their business amid the rise of China’s Belt and Road policy, HSBC needed no such programme.

There are few projects that capture the scale and ambition of the Belt and Road more than the 6,617-kilometre-long rail track being built to link Kunming, in China’s Yunnan province, with Singapore. The railway crosses eight countries, connecting 1.65 billion people in the process. It also demonstrates the long time horizon needed to understand the ties along the Silk Road.

Industrial and Commercial Bank of China has become a big player thanks to its focus on domestic growth. It is the country’s largest financial institution, with Rmb24.9 trillion ($3.78 trillion) of assets at the end of March, according to EY. But as the bank sees its domestic client base moving offshore, it is making efforts to move alongside them.

Judged on purely local terms, Bank of China falls behind some of its domestic rivals: Industrial and Commercial Bank of China and China Construction Bank both bring in far more in terms of net interest income, while Agricultural Bank of China’s branch network – 23,682 at the end of 2016 – is more than twice the size of Bank of China’s. But look abroad and you see a vastly different story.

Through the internationalization of the renminbi, capital markets activity, mergers and acquisitions and the funding of some remarkable projects, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has taken root in financial markets. These are the banks leading the way