OREANDA-NEWS. August 24, 2011. The other day, on the signing ceremony attended by Chairman Xiao Gang, President Li Lihui and Executive Vice President Chen Siqing from Bank of China, together with Chairman Wang Xin and General Manager Li Weimin from Yankuang Group, a comprehensive strategic cooperation agreement was concluded between the two parties, reported the press-centre of Bank of China.

According to the agreement, Bank of China will provide up to RMB 80 billion financing in both local and foreign currencies for Yankuang Group. In addition to the existing credit authorization, deposits and settlement services, the cooperation scope will be extended to corporate banking and personal banking, such as financial companies, corporate annuity, investment bank, insurance and investment trust.

Adhering to the "Go global" strategy, Yankuang Group has actively merged assets both at home and abroad, and increased the reserves of coal and other resources for the past years, achieving a bigger business scale and a stronger position in the industry. Through comprehensive and profound cooperation, Bank of China has supported the Group in many major projects, for example, the acquisition of Australia's Felix Resources Ltd.

Under the agreement, Bank of China will provide comprehensive packages of top-class financial services for Yankuang Group across the world by leveraging on its advantages of globalization and diversification, support the Group to achieve the strategic goal of "Upgrade entrepreneurship to accelerate development", and serve as an important financial platform to facilitate the Group's domestic and overseas development in parallel.

Yankuang Group, a large state-owned group, is one of the strongest leading enterprises in China's coal industry, which is mainly engaged in coal production with many other diversified business operations. The Group ranked the 10th in the list of China's Top 100 Coal Enterprises in 2010. It owns about 6.5 billion tons of recoverable coal reserves in Shangdong, Guizhou, Shaanxi, Shanxi, Xinjiang and Australia.