On August 27, Industrial Bank (IB) and China Metallurgical Group Corporation (hereinafter referred to as the “MCC”) signed and entered into the cooperation agreement on the business of corporate group bill pool in Wuhan, to further the partnership between both parties in the area of settlement and explore new cooperation model for conglomerate bill pool. With the agreement, both parties officially launched all-round strategic cooperation. Vice President Lin Zhangyi of IB and Vice President of MCC signed the cooperation agreement on behalf of both parties respectively.
In accordance with the agreement, IB will, relying on its bill pool system platform, provide MCC with a package of financial services including bill custody, information inquiry, authorized collection, wealth management and financing, mainly for solving problems of the corporate group or its affiliates in the purchase and sale activities such as mismatch of terms for receipt and payment of bills and mismatch of amounts, so as to help the group manage and use internal bill resources in a planned manner. Meanwhile, both parties will, under the HQ-to-HQ framework, further improve the cooperation depth. IB will provide MCC with efficient and superior diversified financial services in the areas including cash management, supply chain finance and wealth management by bringing into play its own professional advantages. In 2013, IB won many prizes awarded by domestic authoritative organizations successively in the above areas, including the “Annual Best Banking Corporation of Innovation in Financial Services”, the “Best Innovation in Cash Management”, the “Best Wealth Management Bank”, the “Best Bank of Innovation in Trade Finance”, the “Competitive Bank for Outstanding Supply Chain Financial Service”, and the “Best Product Innovation Prize” for bill business, etc.
MCC is an extra-large corporate group under the supervision of State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council (SASAC), the world’s largest metallurgy engineering contractor, and a service supplier of technical upgrading and transformation of metallurgy engineering. IB and MCC have established a long partnership, which covers many areas such as conventional credit, cash management, and bill pool, and involves more than 10 branches of IB in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenyang, Xi’an, Chongqing, Nanjing, Tianjin, Wuhan, Hohhot, Shijiazhuang, Jinan, Chengdu, Urumchi, and Dalian, etc. The cooperation in the business of corporate group bill pool will be first carried out in Wuhan region.
“The all-round strategic cooperation opens a new model for the all-sided cooperation between both parties in corporate group bill pool and it is of important strategic significance for MCC to recover internal funds, reduce financing cost, save financial cost, and cover cash management across the whole group”, indicated relevant person-in-charge of MCC.
In recent years, as a forerunner in the domestic market of bill pool business, IB has established cooperation in the area with a great number of large corporate groups in the fundamental industries of national economy such as WISCO, Dongfeng, CSR Corporation, China Railway Construction Corporation, and China Railway Group Limited. By exploring and making innovation in centralized and large-scale business management models for corporate group bill pool, IB improves the bill resources, reduces financial cost and extends the financing channel for large corporate groups, so as to boost their growth. By the end of July 2014, the bill pool of the bank has accumulatively registered the financing value of RMB 42.173 billion, with the pooled bill value of RMB 59.945 billion and more than 500 cooperative enterprises.