OREANDA-NEWS. September 24, 2012. Mr. Herman Gref, CEO and Chairman of the Board of Sberbank, met with Mr. Yang Kaisheng, Vice-Chairman, Executive Director and President of Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), reported the press-centre of Sberbank.

In the course of the meeting the parties discussed existing and prospective cooperation, and outlined specific directions of working relationship on a broad range of mutual interests. Those include financing of the major infrastructure projects in Russia, development of export-import trade finance services, material increase in volumes of trade settlements in national currencies, capital market operations, commodity operations, investment banking services and support of both Sberbank’s Beijing representative office and ICBC’s subsidiary bank in Moscow.

As an outcome of this meeting, Mr. Gref and Mr. Kaisheng signed Cooperation Agreement between Sberbank and ICBC.

Commenting on the meeting Mr. Gref noted: “Russia and China are reliable political and economic partners on the international level. Sberbank is very keen to develop further operations with Chinese partners. We view ICBC as a trusted and reliable business partner with whom we are ready and willing to develop working relationship for many years in future.”

Mr. Kaisheng expressed his confidence in mutual benefits of the cooperation between the biggest Russian and Chinese banks: “Today during the meeting we outlined very concrete and specific directions of our cooperation. This year ICBC and Sberbank have made the first significant step on the long way towards our future collaboration. Both Russia and China are influential parties in the international politics and economics. Coordinated efforts of our banks will undoubtedly facilitate the development of our countries’ economies and will have a positive impact on the global financial system as a whole.”