Bank of China

By Shelley Smith

 By Jamil Anderlini in Beijing

In a large private garden in Manhattan, behind a grand New York City brownstone, a man in his 90s took the hand of a young girl who is not yet 12. The bridge between them, the man's son, the girl's father, stood at a distance, looking on.

"That was pure love," says Sandi Pei, the 60-year-old son of I.M. Pei, the architect who designed Hong Kong's Bank of China tower and the Pyramid at the Louvre, in Paris, France. "I wasn't quite sure whether Anna was leading my father or if he was leading her."

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.