Banking

CCB to hire 6 banks to manage rights offer: rpt

(Agencies)
Updated: 2010-07-20 15:51

China Construction Bank Corp, the nation's second-largest lender, hired six banks to help manage a rights offer to raise as much as 75 billion yuan ($11.1 billion), said four people with knowledge of the matter.

Bank of America Corp's Merrill Lynch, Credit Suisse Group AG, Morgan Stanley, China International Capital Corp, Citic Securities Co and Construction Bank's own investment banking unit were appointed to handle the sale, said the people, who declined to be identified because the information is private.

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Construction Bank last month won shareholder approval to issue as many as 0.7 shares for every 10 outstanding, or as many as 630 million shares in Shanghai and about 15.7 billion in Hong Kong. The Beijing-based company may complete the sale in October, one of the people said.

The sale will bring to about $53.5 billion the amount of money being raised by China's five biggest State-owned banks after they extended record loans last year. Agricultural Bank of China Ltd this month sold $19.2 billion of shares in the world's largest initial public offering in four years.

Yu Baoyue, a Beijing-based press officer at Construction Bank, wasn't immediately available to comment. Officials at Merrill Lynch, Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley, China International Capital and Citic Securities declined to comment or were unavailable.

FinanceAsia reported the hiring of the six banks on its website earlier today.

Shares of Construction Bank rose 2.1 percent to $HK6.41 at the 12:30 pm trading break in Hong Kong. The stock added 0.6 percent in Shanghai.