Beijing (CNS) -- Bank of America (BOA), the second largest bank in the U.S., announced on November 14, local time, that it will sell its holdings of about 10.4 billion H shares in China Construction Bank.
After the transactions are completed in November as forecast, BOA will hold around 1% of the common shares in CCB.
Since BOA first bought CCB stock in June 2005, the extent of its holdings ranged as high as 20 percent. Yet BOA can't avoid the sale if it wants to survive the fallout of the 2008 financial crisis. This will be the fifth reduction in its holdings.
A CCB spokesman claimed promptly after the announcement that while the bank recognizes how fruitful previous bilateral cooperation has been, this transaction won't affect CCB.
At the end of the third quarter, CCB reported assets of 11.8 trillion yuan, with a profit margin measuring 139.2 billion yuan and a capital adequacy ratio of 12.58%. It ranks second in terms of both market value and profitability among global banks.
