But Wal-Mart was stymied recently when it tried to reduce costs by buying a tiny industrial bank.
Shanghai Pudong Development Bank, Bank of Beijing, and Industrial Bank all reported stellar Q3 numbers.
This week it launched several ventures with Industrial Bank of Japan to strengthen its defences against foreign rivals.
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Industrial Bank, for instance, posted a simply astounding 40.9% increase in net profit.
Lu Zhengwei, chief economist of Industrial Bank, told China Daily on Tuesday that trends will continue toward moderate recovery.
The company insists it does not want to move into retail banking, but could save money by processing transactions through a state industrial bank (to be based in Utah).
Renault has faced no such meddling: Nissan's big shareholders, such as Yamaichi Securities, Industrial Bank of Japan and Fuji Bank, were either bust or in too much of a mess to interfere.
Most remarkably, Mikitani, a graduate of Hitotsubashi University whose first job was with Industrial Bank of Japan (now Mizuho Bank) that sent him to Harvard for an MBA in 1993, has been driving his company to realize his global business vision.
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Two banks went bust in 1965, leading to calls for depositors to be made good by the government (which would then recover what it could from the liquidation of bank assets), for the introduction of deposit insurance and the creation of a government-backed industrial bank.
Bank of China, China Construction Bank and Industrial and Commercial Bank of China all revealed their exposure to the US subprime market recently but added that the damage would be limited.
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Friday, branches of the Bank of China and the China Industrial and Commercial Bank in the border city of Dandong told NPR that they had suspended all financial transactions between North Korea and China since the nuclear test.
China Construction Bank jumped 2.6% in Hong Kong and Industrial and Commercial Bank of China ended up 2.7%.
In Hong Kong, Industrial and Commercial Bank and China Construction Bank (HK: 0939) both opened 1.7% lower.
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The fund has held the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China since inception and recently added to their position.
This includes a hit that it has taken on its investment in the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China.
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The impairment charge of Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, for instance, was 1.9 billion yuan lower in Q3 than a year earlier.
On Thursday, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China announced its first half profits had jumped 29% from a year earlier, reaching 109.6 billion yuan.
No outsider knows the percentages of non-performing loans at the big four banks of China, including the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China and China Construction Bank.
Only 4 months after the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China began opening savings accounts linked to gold, more than 1 million such accounts have been opened.
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Industrial and Commercial Bank of China has bought 20% of Standard Bank, a South African lender and the continent's biggest bank by assets, and now offers renminbi accounts to expatriate traders.
The stock of Industrial and Commercial Bank of China dropped by 3.2% in Hong Kong yesterday on the news that Goldman Sachs had dumped part of its stake in the Chinese lender.
"Past experience has taught us that a bad loan crisis usually came three years after a period of abnormal credit surge, " Wei Guoxiong, chief risk management official with the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China was quoted as saying by the Xinhua news agency.
The Unite union said it may ballot its members at the bank for industrial action.
They are unlikely to be helped by their old-fashioned top executives, says Hiroshi Okumura, a professor at Chuo University, who argues that most industrial managers, like bank executives, still have no feel for long-term strategy.
As a result of better than expected industrial production, the Central Bank has changed its dovish tone on interest rates, Salomon said.
The bank cited growing industrial demand on ideas of a growing Asian and U.S. economy and investor interest driven by loose monetary policy.
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Shares of JPMorgan were among the leaders on the Dow Jones industrial average, alongside rival Bank of America, up 4.3%, amid a broader market rally Thursday after the European Central Bank announced a plan to purchase eurozone sovereign bonds.
For the industrial base metals, however, the bank said there are doubts about the durability of QE-induced gains when global PMIs are weak.
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Growth of bank lending to commercial and industrial firms has come to a halt, compared with annual growth of 12% at the end of 1998.
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