Bank of China Limited

Strong growth is expected for equity-linked deposits in China this year, in part because of prodding encouragement by local regulators keen to develop the mainland market. The products, offered by onshore banks to wealthy clients, are structured by international houses who provide the derivative components from their offshore desks. One derivative official estimated the market should grow from 10's of millions to 10 or more times that size in the next few years and could rival Hong Kong's massive structured deposit business.

China Construction Bank (CCB) is expected to be the first among China's Big Four state banks to go public, following a mandate that could be issued as early as the fourth quarter of this year, according to bankers and economists.

In November last year, heads at three of the Big Four - Bank of China (BOC), CCB and Industrial and Commercial Bank of China - said they planned to list by 2005.

Goldman Sachs has downgraded the Hong Kong banking sector amid the atypical pneumonia crisis, triggering a sell-off among banking shares.

......Mr Ramos said in a report. "While dividend yields remain attractive, we see less earnings resilience in 2003 as pressures mount."......

.....Standard & Poor's also issued a report yesterday warning: "Sars is......

Banking shares came under pressure after the reports, with Bank of China (HK) falling 1.86 per cent to HK$7.90 after Goldman downgraded the stock to "in-line" from "outperform".

BoC Hong Kong (Holdings) is unlikely to disappoint the market in its first set of annual results as a listed entity on Thursday.

Bank of China's Hong Kong flagship promised investors a HK$6.3 billion profit when it issued shares last summer, saying it would do whatever it took to make or beat that forecast. But analysts warn that worries about the quality of its corporate loan portfolio and exposure to the property market still cloud its future.
......