Nanjing City Commercial Bank

completed

NCCB was established in 1996 through a merger of 40 existing urban credit cooperatives in Nanjing which were owned primarily by private and collective enterprises and individual citizens. It is a fully-licensed regional commercial bank providing a broad range of banking and related financial services. The mandate of NCCB is to support the rapidly-growing small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Nanjing, most of which are privately and collectively owned. Therefore, SMEs currently account for about 90% of NCCB''s total loan portfolio.The proposed project is intended to strengthen NCCB''s capital base and assist the bank in its efforts to improve corporate governance, adopt international banking best practices, and become one of the best-managed commercial banks in China for emulation by other Chinese banks. IFC is already providing a technical assistance project to NCCB, which will be continued after IFC becomes a shareholder. The project would also help extend IFC''s reach to assist the rapidly-growing SMEs and private enterprises in China.At the moment, the Chinese domestic banks are still not open to foreign investment, so the proposed IFC investment in NCCB is subject to approval by the Chinese government. In this context, the proposed project will enable IFC to play an important role to promote the liberalization and opening-up of China''s banking sector for foreign investment in the future.