When UBS and Royal Bank of Scotland sold their stakes in Bank of China in the depths of the 2008/2009 crisis, there was talk from BoC of wounded feelings and “extract[ing] the firewood from under the cauldron.”
Now, judging by the unemotional part-exit of Bank of America from China Construction Bank, Chinese executives are both older and wiser. For CCB, BofA’s original investment in June 2005 essentially served the same purpose as the British and Swiss purchases of BoC that year: giving the Chinese bank a stamp of credibility before an initial public offering in Hong Kong (it, like BoC, had received a giant state bailout only two years earlier). Six years on, CCB seems to appreciate that an orderly off-market placement, even in the billions of dollars, need not wreak havoc on the share price, once disclosed. Chinese banks have required a lot of capital to keep up with state-directed lending sprees, so investor bases are subject to churn. Better to have a solvent “partner” with 5 per cent, than an insolvent one with 10 per cent.
Beyond that, both sides recognise that, with a few notable exceptions, such as BBVA’s productive relationship with China Citic Bank, these are financial holdings, first and foremost. The alleged long-term strategic benefits – RBS, for example, said it was “excited” by the combination of BoC’s brand and customer base with its own product and operational strengths and experience – were mostly so much hot air. That is why CCB’s clipped announcement of its revised working agreement with BofA, published on Monday, had none of the stirring stuff about “partnership” found in the US bank’s 2005 release. It is also why Agricultural Bank of China, the last of the big lenders to go public last year, did so without any help from a pre-IPO investor. The days when a Western bank could pretend to teach a Chinese bank about risk management are long gone.