The Hong Kong-based investment banking arm of China's largest foreign-exchange lender, the Bank of China (BOC), plans to expand its retail brokerage business, according to a senior official, even as deregulation squeezes brokerages' bottom line.
Instead of acquiring rivals, BOC International (BOCI) is forming its own team of account executives, said Tse Yung-hoi, BOCI's deputy chief executive.
'The scrapping of the minimum commission [in April] has had a negative impact on brokerages' business environment,' he said. '[But] we hope to seize this opportunity to expand our business.'
BOCI had already expanded its share of the Hong Kong brokerage market from 3 per cent to about 5 per cent, Mr Tse said.
This ranks it among the five largest brokerages by market share in Hong Kong, up from being one of the top 10.
BOCI's online trading division, which it acquired from Credit Suisse First Boston and Hutchison E-Commerce last March, now had more than a 10 per cent share of the small but growing online stock trading market in Hong Kong, Mr Tse estimated.