A long-standing property saying, buy the worst property in the best street, is an investment strategy that might go some way to explaining some of the interest in the Agricultural Bank of China's share sale.
Although it is regarded as the worst of the country's Big Four state-owned banks, Agricultural Bank has lifted its game the most in recent years and has the best prospects.
That is a key reason Standard Chartered put in US$500 million as a cornerstone investor in its initial public offering in Hong Kong, said Katherine Tsang King-suen, Standard Chartered's chairman for Greater China.
'Agricultural Bank has made the biggest improvement in the past few years,' she said. 'It has the highest growth rate in various spaces. It has the largest room for growth in the future.'
Tsang is the sister of Chief Executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen.
Agricultural Bank's individual lending grew 69.9 per cent last year, the fastest among all Big Four banks, the remaining members of which are Bank of China, Industrial and Commercial Bank and China Construction Bank Corp.