Agricultural Bank of China

Agricultural Bank of China (ABC), also known as AgBank, is one of the "Big Four" banks in China. It was founded on 10 July 1951, and has its headquarters in Dongcheng District, Beijing. It has branches throughout mainland China, Hong Kong, London, Tokyo, New York, Frankfurt, Sydney, Seoul, and Singapore. ABC has 320 million retail customers, 2.7 million corporate clients, and nearly 24,000 branches. It is China's third-largest lender by assets. ABC went public in mid-2010, fetching the world's biggest ever initial public offering (IPO) at the time, since overtaken by the Saudi Arabian state-run petroleum enterprise, Saudi Aramco. In 2011, it ranked eighth among the Top 1000 World Banks, by 2015, it ranked third in Forbes' 13th annual Global 2000 list and in 2017 it ranked fifth. It is considered a systemically important bank by the Financial Stability Board. Since the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, ABC has been formed and abolished several times. On July 10, 1951, two banks of the Republic of China, Farmers Bank of China and Cooperation Bank, merged to form the Agricultural Cooperation Bank, which ABC regards as its ancestor. However, the bank was merged into People's Bank of China, the central bank in 1952. The first bank bearing the name Agricultural Bank of China was founded in 1955, but it was merged into the central bank in 1957. In 1963 the Chinese government formed another agricultural bank which was also merged into the central bank two years later. Today's Agricultural Bank of China was founded in February 1979. As the People's Bank of China began spinning off its commercial banking functions after 1978, ABC's focus on providing farmers with financial services increased. ABC was restructured to form a holding company called Agricultural Bank of China Limited. It was listed on the Shanghai and Hong Kong stock exchanges in July 2010. In April 2007, ABC was the victim of the largest bank theft in Chinese history. This occurred when two vault managers at the Handan branch of the bank in Hebei province embezzled almost 51 million yuan (US$7.