ICBC shares mixed on Beijing's approval of bond sale

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By Simit Patel:Although he's since backtracked, China's central bank chief Zhou Xiaochuan recently stated that the yuan is on track to becoming a fully convertible currency. A fully convertible yuan will have a major impact on the global economy, and may be part of what gets us out of the global sovereign debt crisis.

China said Monday it would issue yuan-denominated government bonds worth 1.2 billion US dollars in Hong Kong, in its second RMB bond sale as Beijing tries to internationalise its currency.Eight billion yuan of bonds will be sold to institutional and retail investors in the second offering of its kind in the financial hub, following a sale worth around six billion yuan in September last year.

Petroleo Brasileiro SA plans to sell $11 billion of bonds abroad, the most ever for an emerging-market issuer, according to a person familiar with the offering. Petrobras, as the Brazilian state-run oil producer is known, is offering fixed-rate bonds due in three, five, 10 and 30 years as well as three- and five-year floating-rate notes, according to a person, who asked not to be identified because terms aren’t set.

Chinese bank ICBC, the world's largest by market value, opened its first branch in Spain on Monday as part of an expansion in Europe that has highlighted Beijing's growing global influence.The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China branch in Madrid's central Paseo de Recoletos will focus mainly on Chinese immigrants in Spain and firms doing business with the Asian country, the world's second largest economy.

Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, the world's largest by market value, is branching into the broker-dealer business in the United States as it moves to expand overseas, a report said Monday.ICBC paid one dollar to take over the Prime Dealer Services unit of Fortis Securities, which is controlled by France's BNP Paribas, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing unnamed sources familiar with the deal.The report said the deal makes ICBC the first Chinese bank to buy a foreign broker-dealer.

The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), the world's largest bank by market capitalization, announced on Tuesday it was opening branches in Canada.The bank, which bought a 70-percent stake in the Canadian subsidiary of The Bank of East Asia in Hong Kong in January, said four branches in Toronto and two in Vancouver would be converted into ICBC branches, giving it 10,000 individual and corporate clients in Canada.

Hong Kong could attract as much as 14.70 billion US dollars worth of yuan-denominated bank deposits this year, underscoring the city's growing dominance as an offshore centre for the Chinese currency.Deposits reached 89.7 billion yuan at the end of June, according to government statistics. The total was likely to climb as high as 100 billion yuan (14.70 billion dollars) by year's end, the official Xinhua news agency said, citing a Hong Kong Association of Banks official.