I / Singapore June 30, 2010, 13:55 IST
AgBank was set up in 1951 to lend money to the agricultural sector, the bedrock of the Chinese economy at the time, and was directed by government policies rather than commercial interests.
However, its heavy exposure to China's poor inland areas meant its mission was frustrated by decades of chaotic policies and was left riddled with bad debts and considered the weakest among China's major state lenders.
Despite some improvement in the 1980s, AgBank still lagged behind the others and it was only in the past decade that Beijing began shoring up the bank's position.
In 1999, China set up four state-owned asset management companies to help dispose of the Big Four's bad loans, and one took over 345.8 billion yuan ($50.9 billion) in non-performing loans from AgBank.
Two branch managers from central Hebei province were sentenced to death in 2007 for stealing almost 51 million yuan from the bank's vaults over several months and spending the money on lottery tickets.
Founded two years after Mao Zedong's communist revolution, Agricultural Bank of China was created to lend money to the country's poor farmers and distribute state money to rural areas.
Almost 60 years later, the last of China's "Big Four" state banks to float on the stock exchange has kicked off the world's largest share offer.
The bank hopes to set a world record by raising up to $23.2 billion in a dual initial public offering (IPO) in Hong Kong and Shanghai before its scheduled trading debut in the middle of next month.AgBank was set up in 1951 to lend money to the agricultural sector, the bedrock of the Chinese economy at the time, and was directed by government policies rather than commercial interests.
However, its heavy exposure to China's poor inland areas meant its mission was frustrated by decades of chaotic policies and was left riddled with bad debts and considered the weakest among China's major state lenders.
Despite some improvement in the 1980s, AgBank still lagged behind the others and it was only in the past decade that Beijing began shoring up the bank's position.
In 1999, China set up four state-owned asset management companies to help dispose of the Big Four's bad loans, and one took over 345.8 billion yuan ($50.9 billion) in non-performing loans from AgBank.
Two branch managers from central Hebei province were sentenced to death in 2007 for stealing almost 51 million yuan from the bank's vaults over several months and spending the money on lottery tickets.