Bank of China, one of the country’s four largest state-owned commercial banks, has recently announced completion of the commercial registration of its Geneva branch. In July, the Chinese financial institution was included in the list of authorized banks and securities firms by FINMA, Switzerland’s Financial Market Supervisory Authority.
In a press release, the bank said that it will focus on building a bridge for Sino-Swiss trade and investment, providing comprehensive trade finance products and commodity trade financial services to Swiss companies doing business with China and Chinese enterprises in Switzerland. These include food trader COFCO, which established its international HQ in Geneva in 2017, and shipping group COSCO, which followed a year later.
In its statement, Bank of China also evoked the history of Sino-Swiss relations: Switzerland was one of the first Western countries to establish diplomatic relations with China and the first continental European country to sign a free trade agreement with China, in 2013. Today, Switzerland is China’s seventh largest trading partner in Europe and China is Switzerland’s largest trading partner in Asia.
Founded in 1912, Bank of China is considered to be a global systemically important bank. Its overseas service network covers 62 countries and regions.
