New CICC chief faces challenges in returning investment bank to glory days

Bi Mingjian, a veteran executive at mainland investment bank China International Capital Corp (CICC), is seen by analysts as a safe pair of hands to help it realise the initial public offering that is key to its growth in the face of keener competition.

Monday’s appointment of Bi, a member of CICC’s founding management team, as the firm’s chairman and chief executive followed the departure of several top executives in the past year, including long-serving former chief executive Levin Zhu Yunlai, former chairman Jin Liqun, former co-head of investment banking Jiang Guorong and former co-head of international investment banking Marshall Nicholson.

“CICC has fallen behind and has become more low-key in recent years, as rivals like Citic Securities and Bank of China International gained ground,” said AMTD Asset Management general manager Kenny Tang Sing-hing. “Having a new chief executive who had worked there for a long period before, gives market participants some room to think that it will be in safe hands and may have a new direction or strategy.”

Bi was a lead banker for the US$4.2 billion IPO of China Telecom in 1997, helping CICC build a reputation in overseas capital markets, according to two bankers.

“Subsequently Bi was a part of CICC’s senior management team, helping to chart the growth and strategy of CICC,” one of them said.

After topping the rankings in Hong Kong’s equity capital market in 2009 thanks to its dominance in large IPOs by major state-owned enterprises (SOEs), CICC struggled to get block trades and follow-on share-sale mandates, partly because of its relatively narrow client base.

Many of the mainland’s largest SOEs have since gone public, making large IPO were harder to come by, while competition heated up following the IPOs of rivals Citic Securities in 2011 and Haitong Securities in 2012.