12 April 2004 01:14
BOC plans ads in hunt for Russian office chief
Bank of China (BOC) has decided to advertise publicly for the post of head of its Russian branch, the first time the
mainland's second largest lender has taken such a step for an overseas branch chief. The bank, which plans to go
public next year, would also invite applications for its branch heads in northwest Gansu province and on Hainan, the
Beijing Youth Daily reported yesterday.
The official media quoted Zhu Min, the assistant to the president of BOC, as saying the bank would finish devising a
system of ``incentives and disincentives'' for its management in the first half of this year. Both the job
advertisements and the incentives system are part of the bank's plans to restructure its operations before a
planned initial public offering next year. Zhu is in charge of both the restructuring and IPO.
In addition, Bank of China will soon start to merge some administrative departments at its headquarters in Beijing.
Redundant staff would be sent for training before being posted to work in sub-branches so as to improve the service
there.
The bank is said to have been working with Hewitt Associates, a global outsourcing and consulting firm, to devise the
new system. The Beijing newspaper did not elaborate on the qualifications needed for the three posts. It only said that
many professionals in the banking sector at home and abroad would be eager to compete for the jobs.
There was no comment from the bank yesterday. Over the past few years, BOC has cut 25,000 jobs, bringing its current
payroll to 225,000, the smallest among the big four state commercial banks.
Last year, BOC advertised for a chief for the Tibet branch. The past year saw a big improvement in the branch's
performance, with 2003 operating profit of 33.96 million yuan (HK$31.73 million), a 69.5 per cent rise from the previous
year.
After being restructured into a joint stock company, BOC is scheduled to go public, although the listing location has
not been decided.
The lender is in talks with potential strategic investors at home and abroad. At the end of December, the central
government injected US$45 billion (HK$351 billion) in fresh capital into BOC and China Construction Bank, shared evenly
between them, in what was seen as a bailout to improve their books after years of poor management and bad loans.
[The Standard] |
RUSSIA IN FACTS
