Legendary head of China Development Bank to step down

Chen Yuan is not a household name even among bankers, but within the arcane world of Communist Party financial planning he is a legend, the man responsible for effectively creating the China Development Bank.

While it remains to be officially confirmed, reports are swirling that Chen will step down as chairman of this giant, opaque institution, which is wholly owned by the Chinese government and is the world's largest policy lender, and hand over to Bank of Communications's Hu Huaibang.

Financial planning
During his five years as head of Bank of Communication, the 57-year-old Hu has seen the Shanghai-based institution report average 20 per cent annual profit growth.

Chen will be tasked with setting up a new development bank for the Brics countries, which group China with Brazil, Russia, India and South Africa, according to the business magazine Caixin .

Chen is a "princeling", the son of Chen Yun, who was responsible for organising financial planning for chairman Mao Zedong after the Revolution in 1949.

When the younger Chen took over the CDB in 1998, it had a bad-loan ratio of more than 40 per cent, which he has trimmed back to an incredible figure below 1 per cent. In doing so he has created an institution bigger than the World Bank, with assets last year of 7.37 trillion yuan (€910 billion).

At the end of 2012, the bank had €190 billion in foreign currency loans and it has pumped trillions into various domestic projects,

Regular readers of Asia Briefing might recall we wrote about the CDB when discussing China's Superbank: Debt, Oil and Influence – How China Development Bank is Rewriting the Rules of Finance by Bloomberg journalists Henry Sanderson and Michael Forsythe.

The CDB has a difficult period ahead, as it has been in a lengthy process of restructuring now to make it a more manageable and transparent organisation.

Infrastructure projects
At the same time, premier Li Keqiang will require the CDB to orchestrate the government's policies of urbanisation and, now that it has become a hot political issue, cutting pollution.

The state-owned bank created the system of local financing for infrastructure projects during Chen’s first year at the helm, helping to fund highways, schools, dams and housing developments across the country. The system helped cushion China from the global financial crisis in 2008.