(Yicai Global) Oct. 20 -- Ding Shilu, chairman of Chongqing Three Gorges Bank, is being investigated on suspicion of breaking the law, according to Chongqing’s municipal commission for discipline inspection. Questions over the lender had been raised by China’s securities watchdog due to its high proportion of housing loans.

Born in February 1968, Ding initially worked for China’s central bank. He also served as vice president of Chongqing Commercial Bank as well as deputy general manager at the international business department of Industrial and Commercial Bank of China before joining state-backed Chongqing Three Gorges Bank in October 2010.

Chongqing Three Gorges Bank was founded in 2008 and is affiliated with the municipality of Chongqing. It filed for an initial public offering on Dec. 4 last year, but the China Securities Regulatory Commission said its proportion of real estate loans was too high, and required the bank to provide details of the yields and the risks facing its loan business, as well as explaining whether the quality of the housing loans had deteriorated.

The People’s Bank of China and the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission stipulated an upper limit of 17.5 percent for the proportion of real estate loans at smaller state-funded banks at the end of last year. But the balance of Chongqing Three Gorges Bank’s individual housing loans reached CNY19.1 billion (USD3 billion) at the end of 2020, accounting for 18.54 percent of its overall loans.

The bank’s listing efforts have not proceeded smoothly. It finished pre-listing tutoring in 2016, but the listing process subsequently slowed due to a series of violations and other problems. The bank did not gain approval from Chongqing’s municipal banking and insurance regulatory bureau to file for a listing until June last year. The CSRC’s response specified 55 issues, including non-performing loans. 

Chongqing Three Gorges Bank’s total assets reached CNY242.1 billion (USD37.9 billion) by the end of June, up 2.3 percent from the beginning of this year. Its revenue was CNY2.52 billion (USD393.7 million) in the first half, an annual rise of 10.4 percent, and net profit was CNY802 million, up almost 1 percent from last year.

Editor: Tom Litting