China's sixth largest
lender by assets, Postal Savings Bank of China (PSBC), is seeking an initial public offering (IPO) in 2016 that
could outplay Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.’s record,
state media reported Wednesday.
PSBC was established in 2007 and now ranks as the sixth largest bank in the country, with 6.3 trillion yuan ($1 trillion) assets as of 2014.
The bank, currently owned outright by national postal-service provider China Post Group Corp., has received a permission for its offering from the Ministry of Finance, China Daily reported.
The IPO would seek to raise up to $25 billion, an amount which if secured, would tie Alibaba’s New York IPO last year as the largest ever worldwide.
The bank also aims to bring in strategic investors by the end of this June to raise $6 billion through the sale of about 15% of total equity, the report said.
The report didn’t say on which stock market PSBC would list.
The Financial Times reported earlier this week that PSBC had engaged in talks with a group of potential investors for the pre-IPO minority-stake sale.
The prospective investors include Alibaba-affiliated Zhejiang Ant Small & Micro Financial Services Group Co., Australia & New Zealand Banking Group and Singapore sovereign-wealth fund Temasek Holdings, the Financial Times said.
Also listed in the report as possible cornerstone investors were U.S. private-equity groups such as Blackstone Group LP, KKR & Co. LP and Warburg Pincus LLC — the latter currently run by former U.S. Treasury secretary Tim Geithner — as well as Chinese investment funds including Citic Capital and Hopu Investment Management.
As PSBC President Lü Jiajin said in an interview, the bank is widely spread in rural areas, with more than 40,000 branches throughout China, the most among any Chinese bank.
