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Don Weinland

Agricultural Bank of China has announced the loss of its second top executive in just two weeks.
Executive vice president Guo Haoda resigned “due to other work arrangements”, China’s fourth-largest bank by assets said in a regulatory filing at the Hong Kong Stock Exchange late Tuesday.
Mainland media reported earlier this month that Guo would serve as chairman of the board of supervisors at China Investment Corporation (CIC), the mainland’s US$645 billion sovereign wealth fund.
Guo’s departure marks the second in just two weeks from AgBank’s top leadership. Former chairman Jiang Chaoliang resigned in late August and was recently appointed to a top government role in Jilin province.

	Mainland state-owned banks’ management is usually nominated by China’s central government

	Richard Cao, Guotai Junan International
Successors have yet to be publicly appointed to the bank roles.
The resignations represented normal movement between state-owned enterprise and government positions, analysts said, and were unlikely to affect the performance of the bank.
“Mainland state-owned banks’ management is usually nominated by China’s central government,” said Richard Cao, a banks analyst at Guotai Junan International in Shenzhen. “Usually, they will be appointed to a higher government position if they do well. Sometimes, they will also leave their positions for other political reasons such as internal struggle and dereliction.”
AgBank shares had fallen by nearly 2 per cent to HK$3.61 in afternoon trading in Hong Kong, in line with the Hang Seng Index, which traded down 1.8 per cent, and several other big H-shares banks.
An executive at Central Huijin Investment, the investment arm of CIC, said last week at a conference in Frankfurt that Huijin planned to slowly reduce its investments in the mainland’s state banks. The comment was taken as a signal for further state-ownership reform but the Huijin official also noted that the company would seek out better yielding bank investments in Europe as profit growth slowed at China’s banks.


Second Agricultural Bank of China executive leaves

Guo Haoda’s departure marks the second in just two weeks from the top leadership of Agricultural Bank of China. Photo: Edward Wong

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