Societe Generale SA, France's third-largest bank, cut its stake bid for Guangdong Development Bank in line with Chinese regulation governing the limit a single foreign investor can hold.

 

Societe Generale reduced its bid for 25 percent to 19.99 percent in the 11th biggest lender in China, just below the central government's cap of 20 percent that individual overseas investors can hold in domestic lenders, an unnamed party from the French bank involved in the deal said.

 

Its Chinese partners, Shanghai Baosteel Group Corp and China Petrochemical Corp, or better known as Sinopec Group, the parent of Asia's biggest refiner, will raise their proposed holdings accordingly, the source said.

 

The purchase price will remain at 23.5 billion yuan (US$2.93 billion).

 

Societe Generale, Citigroup Inc, the world's biggest financial services group and Ping An Insurance (Group), China's second-largest life insurer, are the three parties leading their consortium to buy a 85 percent stake in the loan-burdened lender.

 

Regulators in April hinted they won't lift investment ceilings for foreign investors in Chinese banks, triggering market talk that the overseas bidders had to cut their holdings in Chinese lenders.

 

The central government sets a 20 percent cap on individual foreign investors in mainland lenders while the combined stake for overseas players is put at 25 percent.

 

Citigroup had been expected to win the deal at a higher bidding price of 24.1 billion yuan with its proposed stake likely at up to 40 percent in the Guangdong Province lender. It is now likely to cut this if there are no plans to allow the US financial giant to break the cap.

 

Officials at Citigroup declined to comment on the deal yesterday.

 

Overseas players are vying to take a bigger bite of China's lucrative banking sector when the country fully opens this sector by the end of this year under its World Trade Organization commitments.

 

22 overseas lenders have been approved to invest a cumulative US$16.5 billion in 17 domestic lenders by last December.

 

The approval is part of the government's plan to revamp its banking sector by allowing overseas investors to improve domestic lenders' corporate governance and gain from overseas management expertise.

 

(Shanghai Daily May 23, 2006)