The president of Guangdong Development Bank has resigned and will join China Merchants Bank next year, Reuters reported yesterday.

Zhang Guanghua, president of Guangdong Development, tendered his resignation to the bank's board on Monday, weeks after a Citigroup-led consortium won management control of the bank in a US$3.06 billion deal.

The resignation has been approved, Reuters said, citing unnamed sources.

Zhang will join China Merchants Bank, one of China's leading joint stock commercial banks, at the beginning of 2007 as an executive vice president, the report said.

Officials from the two banks declined to comment yesterday.

It had been widely assumed that Zhang would leave Guangdong Development Bank when the equity transaction with Citigroup-led consortium was closed.

The business transaction is likely to be completed prior to the shareholders meeting to appoint new heads on December 18, earlier media reports said.

It was also reported that only a week after signing the deal, Citigroup sent a management committee led by Michael Cink, who is from Citigroup's South Korean operation, to the Guangdong Bank.

"We will appoint a new CEO for the Guangdong bank by the time the transaction is completed, expected by the end of this year," Richard Stanley, Citigroup's head of China, said after the signing of the deal.

Officials from Citigroup refused to reveal the latest development yesterday.

On November 16, the Citigroup-led consortium reached an agreement to acquire an 85.6 percent stake in the Chinese bank, ending an 18-month bidding war.

Under the agreement, each of the three major shareholders in the consortium, Citigroup, China Life and State Grid, each holding a 20 percent stake, can nominate three directors and an independent director to the new 17-member board.

The nominations must be approved by shareholders and China's regulatory authorities.

Zhang Guanghua was appointed as the president of Guangdong Development Bank in August 2002.

Before he took the position, he had worked in the State Administration of Foreign Exchange and People's Bank of China.

In recent years, he has led the rather weak lender aim for better performance.

Statistics show the bank had a before-tax profit of 1.68 billion yuan (US$213 million) during the first half of this year, a year-on-year growth of 200 percent.

Today, the lender has 27 branches nationwide with 502 outlets. It has assets of US$47.9 billion with 12 million consumer customers, 9 million cardholders and 16,000 small and medium-sized enterprise clients.

(China Daily December 14, 2006)