KUALA LUMPUR: Malayan Banking Bhd (Maybank) is eyeing a banking
license in Laos while Hong Leong Bank Bhd (HLB) is hoping to raise the
bank's stake in the soon-to-be-listed Bank of Chengdu Co Ltd.
Maybank
president and chief executive officer Datuk Seri Abdul Wahid Omar said
that the bank had applied to open a branch in Laos and this would complete the
group's presence in the Asean region.
He said
the bank was still awaiting approval from the relevant authorities and had not
set a target when it would commence operations in Laos.
At the
same time, Wahid said it was looking to further strengthen its presence in the
region, among others, by converting its representative office in Myanmar to a
branch office, although he did not specify the timeframe as to when this would
take place.
The
banking group currently has more than 2,200 branches internationally. In
Thailand, for example, he said it intended to pursue retail and commercial
banking operations there, where it now had investment banking and equity
brokerage businesses.
In the
Middle East, he said the bank already had a branch in Bahrain and that it was
in the midst of looking at increasing its stake in the Saudi Arabian investment
banking associate Anfaal Capital from the current 18%.
In
India, Maybank has operations via Maybank Kim Eng and was also in the midst of
re-activating its PT Bank Internasional Indonesia Tbk's Mumbai branch.
Wahid
said Maybank was targeting to derive 40% of its earnings from international
operations by 2015.
Meanwhile,
HLB is looking to raise its stake in its 20%-owned associate Bank of Chengdu. However, the government has a 20% limit on
foreign banks' holdings in Chinese retail banks.
Hong
Leong group managing director and CEO
Yvonne Chia said: “As long as the government today allows only a
maximum of 20%, I don't think we can do much about it. When we have a chance to
increase our stake, of course we will.”
Chengdu
is currently in the queue to file an initial public offering (IPO) on the Shanghai
Stock Exchange's A-share market. “We have submitted applications for the IPO.
I'll wait for the outcome. We can only take 20% of what the law allows,” Chia
said.
One of
the bank's key strategies to improve return on assets and return on
shareholders' funds is in its strategy for consumer banking. “In particular,
our strategy for consumer banking is to rebalance, remix yield management and
at the same time also bring in efficiency through the e-banking channel
wherever we can,” Chia said.
On
business banking, she said the key opportunity for HLB was to grow global
markets to cross sell and capture the competencies that it had in its trade
customers, the trade flows and analytics it had in business banking and
translate that into solutions for its customers.
“With
the merger with Eon
Bank, we have grown our market share in the segment to about 9%, where
previously it was between 2% and 3.5%,” Chia said.
She
said HLB aimed to move its Islamic bank from a consumer Islamic bank to a
wholesale bank. The contribution there will be from transaction income in
Islamic wholesale and investment banking, treasury and wealth management.
“Post
the merger, the benefit that we have is the relationship with the Government.
We hope to further bring that to the next level,” Chia said.
She
also said that as part of its merger plans with Eon Bank, HLB aimed to raise
more ringgit funding.
“We
have raised US dollars funding for our normal working capital and we are in the
midst of raising ringgit funding to boost our capital,” she said.
DALJIT
DHESI and WONG WEI-SHEN
Business & Investment Opportunities
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