The Shanghai Commercial Bank (Chinese: 上海商業銀行) and its subsidiary companies are engaged in the provision of banking and related financial services in Hong Kong, United States, United Kingdom and the People’s Republic of China. As a group, it employs over 1,790 people. The bank is a financial institution incorporated in Hong Kong. The address of its registered office is 12 Queen’s Road Central, Hong Kong.
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Established in November 1950, Shanghai Commercial Bank was and in some sense still is one of the renowned local Chinese banks in Hong Kong and has a niche market position in the corporate and trade finance sectors.
The Shanghai Commercial Bank offers corporate and retail banking services and products including deposits, loans, remittances, foreign exchange, trade finance, securities trading, wealth management services, credit cards, and insurance, amongst others. The bank also offers telephone banking and electronic banking services as a fast and convenient means to serve individual and corporate clients respectively. Moreover, the Bank has been issuing floating rate certificates of deposit which were well received by the market since early 1994.
At present, Shanghai Commercial Bank has 43 branches in Hong Kong, 1 branch in Shenzhen, 1 representative office in Shanghai, and 4 overseas branches in London, New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco.
The consolidated profit attributable to shareholders, in 2009, was HK$1,336 million, representing a gain of 12.7 percent. The increase was primarily due to the substantially lower impairment allowances, positive contributions from all the jointly controlled entities, improved fee income from securities related business and treasury operation. The return on average total assets and return on average equity stood at 1.2 percent and 8.7 percent respectively. Capital adequacy ratio remained strong at 19 percent, while the liquidity ratio was 55 percent. The additional compensation made for the Lehman Brothers Minibonds Repurchase Scheme had a negative impact on the Bank’s cost-to-income ratio and it increased to 43.7 percent. Excluding the additional compensation, the ratio would have been 34.9 percent; in 2008, it was 34.3 percent.
The bank is obtaining the necessary approval to upgrade the Shanghai representative office to full branch status. Also, the bank is committed to the “Green Channel”, a convenient one-stop platform of premium banking services in the Greater China region, for the VIP customers of the three banks: Shanghai Commercial Bank in Hong Kong, Bank of Shanghai on Mainland China and The Shanghai Commercial & Savings Bank in Taiwan. The redevelopment project of the Head Office building, together with the adjacent plot, is proceeding on course. The bank has engaged the award winning Rocco Design Architects Limited as the project’s architectural firm. The general building plan is expected to be finalised some time in 2010 and demolition of the current structures will commence in mid 2011.
Historically, the Shanghai Commercial Bank was originally founded in Shanghai in 1915 under the leadership of Mr. K.P. Chen (1881–1976), a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Finance. The bank expanded in the late 1920s and early 1930s, endured the period of Japanese aggression, and re-established itself in Taiwan and Hong Kong after the rise of Communism in mainland China in late 1949.
The Shanghai Commercial Bank was established in Hong Kong in 1950. It is majority owned by the Shanghai Commercial and Savings Bank of Taiwan, which itself was only allowed to re-establish its head office in Taipei in 1954. Both parts of the bank, in Hong Kong and Taiwan, rebuilt themselves from the 1960s-1980s as both economies prospered. Today, the SCB has re-established itself in Shanghai with a stake in the Bank of Shanghai.
It also advertises, to an extent, its link to Bank of Shanghai and SCSB with the slogan "Bank of Shanghai in 3 regions on both sides of the Strait".