Silcon Valley Bank Forges Into China 美国矽谷银行与浦发成立合资银行

By newsdoug on June 15, 2012

I’ve previously written about a low-key second wave of financial service companies quietly coming into China after a pull-back of earlier arriving big names like Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) and Citigroup (NYSE: C), with US tech-focused lender Silicon Valley Bank the latest name to join this trend. What’s equally interesting in this latest news is the rapid speed with which the government has approved the joint venture between Silicon Valley Bank and Shanghai-based Pudong Development Bank (Shanghai: 600000), indicating Beijing may be keen to bring in more foreign expertise from these smaller names as it looks to build up a viable private sector banking industry that operates outside the traditional realm of big state-owned lenders. Let’s look at the latest reports, which have an executive from California-based Silicon Valley Bank saying he was surprised at the rapid speed with which his bank’s joint venture was approved following its announcement last October, and that new joint venture bank will aims to open by September. (English article) Silicon Valley Bank’s pairing comes just months after Citibank sold a 3 percent stake it had held in Pudong Development Bank for several years, mirroring a recent trend that has seen many major western banks sell off investments they made nearly a decade ago in Chinese lenders. (previous post) While the western lenders made many of those sales to raise cash to bolster their shaky balance sheets, observers also noted that many were disappointed that their investments never led to strategic partnerships to help them tap the fast-growing China market for financial services. This new tie-up between Silicon Valley Bank and Pudong Development Bank looks like a clearly focused initiative to help service the growing semiconductor chip sector, anchored by leading chip maker SMIC (HKEx: 981; NYSE: SMI), and a growing field of LCD and LED makers emerging in the Yangtze River delta area. Whereas many of the earlier tie-ups between the big western banks and their Chinese counterparts contained lofty dreams that were never really realized, this more recent round of new initiatives by smaller players looks much more targeted and modest in its ambitions, seeing foreign companies pair with smaller local players in highly-focused moves with specific aims. As such, I would give them a much better chance for success than the previous tie-ups. Other recent lower-profile tie-ups in the financial services sector have included moves by money transferring specialist MoneyGram (NYSE: MGI), which recently expanded its tie-up with Bank of China (HKEx: 3988; Shanghai: 601988); and American Express, which has invested in an electronic payments firm called Lianlain. (previous post) Beijing is probably quietly encouraging these kinds of tie-ups to more rapidly propel its financial services sector to world-class status, especially as it faces its own internal banking crisis that is largely the result of older practices still seen at many banks that behave more like policy-based institutions than true market-oriented lenders. Accordingly, look for a growing number of these kinds of new tie-ups involving mid-tier western players in the months ahead.

Bottom line: The rapid approval of Silicon Valley’s new joint venture bank indicates Beijing wants to bring in more niche-oriented foreign firms to bolster its financial services sector.

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