OREANDA-NEWS. October 27, 2014. During the one-year operation of the Shanghai (Pilot) Free Trade Zone (FTZ), ICBC has provided strong support to its development in multiple dimensions such as institution setting, resource allocation, institutional support, business innovation and domestic and overseas collaboration and remarkable results have been achieved.

Since the establishment of the FTZ in September 2013, ICBC has creatively developed special financial products for the FTZ based on customer needs by introducing 45 featured products in four categories, namely, settlement, investment, financing and transaction. In addition, ICBC has actively participated in the financial engineering of the FTZ. By leveraging overseas operations of the Group and integrating global Renminbi resources, ICBC has served Chinese enterprises to “Going Global” and helped expand the cross-border utilization of Renminbi. The Bank has also implemented financial reform policies and created many “firsts” in the FTZ market.

In terms of overseas RMB financing, ICBC has provided overseas RMB loans to many Chinese and foreign enterprises through coordinated domestic and overseas operations, which has promoted the role of overseas RMB funds in Europe and Asia in serving domestic real economy. As for RMB cross-border fund pool, ICBC has successfully built the first domestic cross-border two-way RMB fund pool, meeting enterprises’ profound demand for global cash management. Regarding cross-border RMB payment, ICBC has cooperated with several payment agencies in cross-border e-commerce RMB payments.

In terms of financing under free trade account, ICBC has granted RMB loans of RMB 1.35 billion to multiple large, medium and small-sized enterprises located in the FTZ, in the form of working capital financing and international trade financing. Besides, ICBC Leasing has established a SPV company in the FTZ, successfully processed the first large aircraft financial leasing transaction, and completed import declaration, import payment and lease initiation of the aircraft.

As for investment, financing and exchange facilities, ICBC has fully utilized relevant policies to offer consulting services on cross-border M&As, and extended the first cross-border M&A loan in the FTZ. ICBC has designed the M&A scheme for Shanghai Xian Dai Architectural Design (Group) Co., Ltd.’s acquisition of Wilson & Associates (“W&A”), the third largest interior design company in the US, through which a new entity is established in the FTZ to fully utilize the cross-border investment and financing facility. The Bank helped establish the entity for the M&A and completed the whole process of acquisition within two months, involving a transaction amount of USD 60 million.