Postal Savings Bank of China Co Ltd is accelerating the process of introducing strategic investors to the bank, its vice-president Xu Xueming said on Thursday.
Wholly owned by China Post Group Corp, the State-owned postal service, the bank is preparing for an initial public offering in 2016, aiming to raise up to $25 billion, people with knowledge of the matter said in February.
"Introducing strategic investors will help introduce capital, management mechanism and intellectual support to our bank. This way, we'll improve our corporate governance structure, level of management and ability to serve the real economy. We could also build a long-term mechanism to replenish the capital after our bank is floated on the stock market," Xu said at a media conference in Beijing.
Swiss financial firm UBS AG, Singapore's Temasek Holdings Pte and French bank BNP Paribas were among six preliminary bidders to buy up to a 10 percent stake in PSBC for at least $3 billion, Reuters reported in April.
A previous report by the Financial Times in February said among other potential investors are Zhejiang Ant Small & Micro Financial Services Group Co, an affiliate of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.
Xu said the bank will try its best to invest 300 billion yuan ($48.3 billion) in modern logistics and the construction of urban rail, utility tunnels and charging stations in the next three years.
The lender is also planning to extend loans of 5 trillion yuan to agriculture, countryside and farmer-related projects, small and micro enterprises, and consumer finance in the next five years.
Since it was established in 2007, PSBC has been devoted to exploring financial services related to agriculture, farmers and small businesses.
During the first six months of this year, agriculture-related new loans of the bank reached 105.6 billion yuan, accounting for 28 percent of the total. During the same period, its new loans to small and micro enterprises were 66.4 billion yuan.
As China's largest bank by outlets, PSBC had more than 40,000 outlets at the end of June, with 488 million retail customers and 580,000 corporate clients.
Its total assets reached 6.5 trillion yuan.
