OREANDA-NEWS. January 15, 2015. In the 2014 selection of outstanding syndicated loan business organized by the Syndicated Loan and Trading Committee of the China Banking Association, ICBC has been granted the "Best Performance Award" for the fifth consecutive time, and the "Best Management Award" for the first time for its organization of the syndicated loan business.

In addition, the syndicated loan project for the Yunnan section of the Yungui Railway (Kunming-Nanning Passenger Railway Line) led and arranged by the Bank won the "Best Transaction Award". According to the statistics of the China Banking Association, in the first half of 2014, ICBC was ranked first among its peers by the number of lead banks and correspondent banks for newly-signed syndicated loans, and successfully arranged syndicated loans for many large high-quality projects, providing strong support to the growth of the real economy.

This event sets up five major award categories – Best Performance, Best Development, Best Management, Best Organization & Facilitation, and Best Transaction, among which the "Best Performance Award" rates candidates on indicators such as the value, number and fee income of projects as lead manager,  and the value of projects not as lead manager. The selection of the "Best Transaction Award" tilts towards innovative syndicated loan projects in a bid to encourage innovation in the related business model. The RMB 24.2-billion syndicated loan project for the Yunnan section of the Yungui Railway led by ICBC was not only the biggest of all the projects during the same period in terms of financing amount in China, but also creatively adopted a group-based model, under which specific loans were grouped by different maturities, and then members of the consortium chose the amount of loans to be granted in relevant maturity groups through negotiation. This is more instrumental in flexibly designing the syndicated loan structure, boosting the efficiency of arranging and distributing syndicated loans, and enhancing market competitiveness.

Syndicated loan means a business where a number of banks or other financial institutions licensed to deal in credit business form a consortium, and provide loans or credit to the same borrower based on the same lending conditions and using the same loan contract. Compared with conventional bilateral loans, syndicated loans are of critical importance in addressing the defects of bilateral loans. By arranging a loan through a consortium, members of the consortium review the risks about the borrower respectively and communicate over relevant information with each other to effectively overcome the issue of information asymmetry, identify and diversify loan risks through a multilateral review, check-and-balance, and supervision mechanism. In the meantime, syndicated loans can reflect the overall funding demand and supply condition relatively comprehensively, and favorably contribute to a market-driven loan rate formation mechanism. For clients, the syndicated loan model can save them from repeatedly negotiating with different banks, shorten fundraising time, and lower financing costs.