Background
Yang Kaisheng was born in 1949, Beijing, China, China.
凯生 杨
Yang Kaisheng was born in 1949, Beijing, China, China.
Yang graduated from Beijing College of Chemical Technology and in 2000 received a doctoral degree in economics from Wuhan University.
For ten years he worked in the field of industrial protection technology and cost budget management, joining ICBC in 1985 as director of the Planning and Information Department. In 1990 he was promoted to general manager of ICBC’s Shenzhen branch. Because of his outstanding performance, Yang was named vice governor of ICBC in 1996.
In 1999, Yang became the president of the China Huarong Asset Management Corporation, which is a wholly state-owned financial enterprise with an independent legal structure. The main scope of the corporation covers the purchase, management, and disposal of assets transferred from the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China. The operational objective of the company is to take advantage of the special legal status given by the state government to preserving the assets and minimizing the losses incurred including bad debts worth RMB400 billion (approximately US$50 billion) of the ICBC. For years the issue of bad debts has been a major challenge to the further develop- ment of the Chinese banking industry, and Huarong was the first asset company in China to tackle the problem by cooperating with foreign banks such as Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanly. The experience of working in Huarong was very beneficial to Yang, enabling him to better understand and learn how foreign investment and commercial banks clean up bad debts and strengthen the ability of risk management. Five years later, in 2004, Yang returned to ICBC as vice president. He was seen as a behind-the-scenes hero for helping ICBC dispose of its bad debts in an innovative way.
The year 2005 saw another arduous project for Yang, as ICBC planned to launch the world’s largest initial public offering (IPO) in 2006. Since mainland Chinese banks have a long track record of bad debts and lending scandals, and the two other major state banks the Bank of China and the China Construction Bank had already sold shares in Hong Kong, ICBC had to restructure its organization and wipe out billions of dollars in deficient loans. In this critical year, after ICBC restructured as the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Limited, Yang was named president. On 27 October 2006, ICBC was simultaneously listed on the Hong Kong and mainland stock exchanges, the first Chinese company to do so, which also created a number of records, including the largest scale in the global capital markets, with 65 billion shares and the RMB173.23 billion raised, by then the world’s largest-ever IPO (rmdbbbj.cn, 2008). The public offering marked ICBC’s successful transformation from a state-owned commercial bank to a joint-stock commercial bank and then to an international public shareholding corporation.
Currently Yang also serves as deputy director of the China International Economics and Trade Arbitration Commission, and as chairman of ICBC Credit Suisse Asset Management Co. Ltd.
In ICBC, Yang has long been regarded as a leader with an international perspective and practical expertise. Operating in the fast changing global environment, Yang lays much emphasis on overseas markets, especially newly emerging markets. In 2007, ICBC made an announcement on an equity deal and strategic cooperation with the Standard Bank of South Africa. After paying 36.67 billion rand (US$5.46 billion) for a 20 percent stake, ICBC became the single largest shareholder of the Standard Bank. Through this kind of tactical alliance with overseas financial corporations, Yang intends that ICBC will step up its efforts in streaming its deployment of assets around the world to give the customers far superior cross-border financial services, therefore creating higher returns for its shareholders.
