ICBC recently announced that it has established HQ correspondent bank relationship with 1205 overseas foreign banks till the end of Q1 2006 and has been kept a tight business partnership with most of the top 1000 banks around the world. Today, ICBC's correspondent bank network is stretched over 6 continents and 116 nations and regions.

Meanwhile, the pace of ICBC seeking correspondent bank is accelerating. In 2005, ICBC added to its existing network 187 additional oversea correspondent banks, representing a volume growth of 19% vis-à-vis 2004 level, according to the internal statistics. It also blazed access into new markets in 9 countries.

According to a person-in-charge from related department of ICBC, ICBC has been dedicated to the foreign correspondent bank network expansion and to improvement of banking exchange and cooperation with the foreign banks since its first correspondent bank relationship with the foreign bank -- Nanyang Commercial Bank Ltd. in 1985. The case was especially eminent in recent years. In order to meet the needs from China's rapidly growing foreign trade and to support China in broader and high-end participation into international economic and technological cooperation and competition, ICBC takes overseas correspondent bank network expansion as strategic work and places continued emphasis on it.   Based on research on customers' overseas transaction needs, ICBC constructed its overseas correspondent banks network with a more reasonable distribution so as to provide better and more choices that better fulfill the domestic and international financial service demand by enterprises and individuals.

It is said that the scope of cooperation between ICBC and the overseas correspondent banks is expanding as well. Today, ICBC is able to provide the correspondent banks with a series of full services including Foreign Currency, RMB, Instrument, Payment/settlement and Agency, Foreign Currency Guarantee, International Settlement, Trade Financing, Non-trade Financial Services, domestic/foreign Currency Account Clearing, Investment Banking, Asset Custody, Cash Management, and Electronic Banking. It achieved the development from the pure foreign currency services to a variety of services in both RMB and the foreign currencies, and achieved innovation from traditional International Settlement to Forfeiting, Factoring, Risk Participation, Personal Pre-Exchange Settlement, Financial Derivatives, QFII and other various businesses.

A person-in-charge from related department of ICBC introduced that, on April 13th, ICBC has just signed cooperation agreement on cash management and agreement on USD fund clearing account with Bank of Upper Austria. Since the establishment of corresponding bank relationship between ICBC and Bank of Upper Austria in July 2001, both banks have been keeping a close business partnership and have signed Memorandum of Understanding for Cooperation and Cooperation Agreement on Commitment Swap in March and September 2005 respectively. The two banks carried fruitful cooperation in aspects of Euro Remittance, Syndicate Loan, Trade Financing and International Settlement, Money Market, and joint marketing, which laid decent banking service support for the corporate investments and trades between the two countries.

The person-in-charge also indicated that ICBC would continue its contribution to China's opening strategy in future through increasing its role in the international market and through the strategic transition from a domestic leading bank to an international leading bank, thereby enabling more convenient, considerate, and quality financial services for customers.