ICBC, with its balance of M&A loans reaching RMB 100,085 million as at the end of the first half, an increase of 22% compared to the end of 2014, became the first domestic financial institution with the balance of M&A loans exceeding RMB 100 billion.

With increasingly active capital operations in recent years, Chinese enterprises have high demand for investment banking services such as mergers, acquisitions, restructuring. In this regard, by leveraging the Group’s overall advantages and the professional investment banking team, ICBC has positively expanded M&A businesses. It completed 249 advisory projects of M&A in the first half of this year alone, involving transactions worth over RMB 133.0 billion. In the first half of the year, ICBC ranked the first in terms of transactions in financial advisories for completed M&A in China published by Thomson Reuters.

With regard to domestic M&A, ICBC has actively pioneered key business areas such as placement of the controlling shareholders of listed companies, restructuring of state-owned enterprises, equity incentives, M&A of PPP stock assets, M&A funds, among others, and successfully completed placement of Wasu Media, employee stock ownership plan of TCL Group, placement of Baogang Group, Wuhan Airport’s acquisition of Hubei Airport, China Construction Communications Group’s merger and acquisition of Sanya Phoenix Island and other influential projects in the market. As for cross-border M&A, ICBC has positively driven the project of China-Brazil Industrial Park, and completed several major cross-border M&A projects including Jinjiang International’s acquisition of French Louvre Hotel Group, Fosun Group’s acquisition of Club Med, among others, effectively elevating the brand image of ICBC’s investment banking worldwide.