In recent years, ICBC has continued to step up support to corporate M&A and used the financial leverage to promote the economic structural adjustment and industrial upgrading. By the end of November 2015, ICBC has completed 304 M&A projects at home and abroad, involving a transaction value of RMB 180 billion. In the released ranking of Chinese, Asia-Pacific and Chinese overseas M&A financial advisory service for the first three quarters, ICBC won the first place in terms of the number of M&A transactions.

During the economic structural adjustment and industrial upgrading, the M&A is an important approach for enterprises to effectively mitigate the surplus productivity, lift the efficiency of operation and achieve transformation and upgrading. According to the statistics, China’s M&A amount in the first three quarters has exceeded the total amount in 2014, up over 50% on a yearly basis. To satisfy customers’ requirements for M&A transactions, ICBC became the first among its domestic peers to build an M&A service team. It has also established an M&A service product system including M&A loan, M&A agency and investment, joint M&A and investment, M&A bonds and M&A advisory service by leveraging its strength in commercial banking financing and investment banking intelligence, and provided integrated financial services for M&A of various domestic and overseas enterprises in the forms of “investment banking + commercial banking”, “advisory + financing”, “domestic + overseas” and “local currency + foreign currencies”, in a bid to support their industrial transformation and upgrading and “Going Global”. As at the end of September, ICBC's domestic M&A loan balance exceeded RMB100 billion, up as high as 33.3% compared with the end of 2014.

As for the promotion of domestic M&A, ICBC, has successively driven private placement of TCL Group, Wasu Media and Inner Mongolia Baotou Steel Union this year by designing innovative M&A schemes and completed various M&A transactions such as acquisition of Hainan Haiyao by South Tontzheng, acquisition of Shanghai Securities by Guotai Jun’an Securities, acquisition of Hubei Airport by Wuhan Air Harbor and acquisition of Shanghai Baosteel Changning by Rongqiao Group. In terms of the service for cross-border M&A, ICBC ranked the first among Chinese-funded financial institutions in the amount and quantity of cross-border M&A transactions. This year, it supported a number of important cross-border M&A projects such as acquisition of French Louvre Hotel Group by Jin Jiang International Group, acquisition of Swiss Infront Sports & Media by Dalian Wanda Group, acquisition of US ISSI by Beijing E-town International Investment & Development Co., Ltd. consortium and acquisition of Village Main Reef by HEAVEN-SENT Capital Management Group Co., Ltd. ICBC also participated in the organization of two cross-border M&A industrial funds of COFCO Group and Jin Jiang International, and developed overseas fund raising and investment in many channels and in an all-around manner, in order to support the enterprises’ “Going Global” and enhance their international competitiveness.

Moreover, ICBC has played an active role in bridging the enterprises’ cross-border investment and M&A. It has held many high-level economic and trade investment activities, such as “Pakistan Investment Forum”, “Sino-African Entrepreneurs Forum”, “China-Germany SMEs Forum”, the “Fifth China-Central and Eastern European Countries Economic and Trade Forum” (sub-forum of the “Belt and Road” initiative), which helped match projects between Chinese enterprises and countries and territories along the “Belt and Road” and provided M&A and investment information for hundreds of enterprises.