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ICBC Standard Bank just made a huge bet on gold. Although the details weren't disclosed, China's largest bank now owns one of just seven secret gold vaults hidden in London in what is something of an exclusive gold market. Here's what you need to know. A piece of the action China's ICBC is the world's largest bank by assets. And according to the BBC, China accounts for roughly 25% of global gold demand. So clearly, ICBC needs to be involved in the gold trade in a big way. However, China isn't the world's hub for gold trading; that distinction goes...

ICBC Standard Bank PLC said on Monday it is buying a precious-metals vault from Barclays PLC’s, in the latest move by the Chinese bank to increase its role in the market’s infrastructure. The move makes parent ICBC, the world’s biggest bank by assets, the first Chinese lender to own a vault in London and extends its influence in precious metals from pricing to storage. With China the largest consumer of many metals, the country’s banks have increasingly bid to own or help run the infrastructure in these markets. China accounts for more than a quarter of global gold demand, but...

The United States on Wednesday opened its banking market to ICBC, China's biggest bank, for the first time clearing a takeover of a US bank by a Chinese state-controlled company. Just days after high-level US-China economic talks in Beijing, the Federal Reserve approved an application from Industrial and Commercial Bank of China to buy a majority stake in the US subsidiary of Bank of East Asia. The transaction will make ICBC the first Chinese state-controlled bank to acquire retail bank branches in the United States. ICBC has been the most aggressive of China's "big four" banks in expanding overseas. According...

Fraud rampant at ICBC Pamela Pun Fraud at Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), the country's largest lender, is rampant with staff and customers conspiring to obtain as much as 17 billion yuan (HK$16.03 billion) in illegal loans, an audit has found. The National Audit Office studied the books at the bank's headquarters in Beijing and just a handful of branches around the country. In a report to the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, Auditor General Li Jinhua has listed numerous irregularities to secure money for land, property, cars and simply cash. In one case, at a...