Acquiring strategic stakes in Chinese banks

The acquisition of strategic stakes in China’s national, regional and city commercial banks remains a topic of keen interest to foreign investors. This is so even though, at the time of the author’s writing, foreign investment approvals for these types of investments seems to have been temporarily placed on hold following China’s restructuring of its central ministries and administrative bureaux in April this year. This restructuring included the formation of the China Banking Regulatory Commission CBRC to take over the regulation of banks and other financial institutions from China’s central bank, the People’s Bank of China PBOC, which will remain in charge of monetary policy. The exact delineation of authority between the CBRC and...