OREANDA-NEWS. May 27, 2013. Recently, Industrial Bank (IB) and China National Tobacco Corporation (China Tobacco) signed strategic cooperation memorandum, establishing a partnership based on “long-term cooperation, mutual support and common development”. Under the memorandum, IB will provide financial services to China Tobacco, including cash management, capital financing, financial service to upstream and downstream SMEs of the tobacco industry, consulting and training.

The cooperation is reached on the background that China Tobacco successfully subscribed the shares of IB at the end of 2012 and became the third largest shareholder of the bank. At present, IB is also the only commercial bank in which China Tobacco has made investment and held shares.

The memorandum signed signifies, in addition to the equity cooperation between both parties, that they will establish an all-round and long-term strategic cooperation relationship at the business level and become the most important partner to each other. On the precondition of observing national laws and regulations, regulatory provisions, financial policies and market-oriented principles, IB will, with its own financial resources, give priority to providing all-sided superior, efficient, preferential and individualized financial services and funds support to China Tobacco and its subsidiaries. China Tobacco will choose IB as one of its important main banks of financial businesses, and its subsidiaries will also take IB and its branches as one of the main targets in providing financial services.

IB indicates that it will provide complete financial services for the tobacco industry by improving its service products, accelerating financial innovation and further bringing into play its diversified financial service advantages, including but not limited to cash management, capital financing, financial service to upstream and downstream SMEs of the tobacco industry, consulting and training.

In the aspect of cash management services, IB will provide China Tobacco and its affiliated domestic tobacco enterprises with all-round cash management services including account management, information inquiry, domestic funds aggregation, and bank-enterprise direct linkage, and offer fast, convenient and safe funds aggregation and exchange businesses.

In the aspect of capital financing, IB will provide credit support to tobacco enterprises based on their fund demands and market-oriented principle in accordance with the development policies for the tobacco industry and internal risk assessment mechanism. IB will provide financial services for the construction of major projects of the tobacco industry at home, covering financing, syndicated loan, financial consultation, assessment, and insurance, etc.

In the aspect of financial service to upstream and downstream SMEs of the tobacco industry, IB will, according to the operation characteristics of the whole industrial chain including purchase, production and sale of tobacco raw materials, provide tailored services to upstream and downstream SMEs of the tobacco industry, adopt the financial service model different from that for large enterprises in terms of credit procedure, management model, risk control, and service price, and assist China Tobacco in intensifying the management and control of supply chain.

In the aspect of consultation and training services, IB will make use of it own resource advantages to provide China Tobacco and its affiliated enterprises with information consulting and training services on different themes such as finance and capital market.