The China CITIC Bank has been granted a QDII (Qualified Domestic Institutional Investors) license by the Chinese government, becoming the sixth Chinese-funded bank to be given such a license.

 

A QDII license allows domestic institutions and residents to invest money in overseas financial products via mainland commercial banks and other financial institutions.

 

The latest move brings the number of China's Qualified Domestic Institutional Investors to ten, including nine Chinese and foreign-funded banks such as the state-owned Bank of China, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China and Citibank, and a domestic fund.

 

Some of the QDIIs have started their services, and the Chinese government has so far given investment quota of US$9.3 billion to those QDIIs.

 

Banks with QDII licenses focus most of their investment in financial products with fixed income in overseas monetary market.

 

The China CITIC Bank, affiliated with the CITIC Group and established in Beijing in 1987, is China's seventh largest commercial banks.

 

By the end of June 2006, the net profit of the China CITIC Bank reached 3.675 billion yuan, and its capital adequacy ratio reached 9.44 percent, relatively high compared with other mainland share-holding banks of similar size.

 

(Xinhua News Agency September 8, 2006)