Beijing plans to raise the listing threshold for the mainland's 143 city commercial banks, a move to bar most of them from floating initial public offering shares.
But this will not affect Bank of Shanghai which is set to list on the Shanghai Stock Exchange this year, eyeing a net 20 billion yuan (HK$23.7 billion) to replenish capital.
City commercial lenders whose total assets were less than 80 billion yuan would not be given approval to launch offerings, said New Century Weekly, a magazine run by former Caijing editor Hu Shuli.
Neither the securities regulator nor the banking watchdog would comment on the issue yesterday.
The magazine also said the city banks must report net interest income of more than two billion yuan a year before applying for a flotation.
At present, there are no requirements on banks' assets when they file applications to list.