Agricultural Bank of China

Agricultural Bank of China Limited

Native name	中国农业银行股份有限公司
Type	partial state-owned enterprise
Traded as	: (A ordinary) : (A preference 1) : (A preference 2) : 1288 (H ordinary)
Industry	Banking, Financial services
Founded	1951; 66 years ago (1951)
Headquarters	Beijing, China
Key people	Zhao Huan (President)
Products	Finance and insurance Consumer Banking Corporate Banking Investment Banking Investment Management Global Wealth Management Private Equity Mortgages Credit Cards
Revenue	CN¥377.73 billion (2011)
Net income	CN¥121.95 billion (2011)
Total assets	CN¥17.989 trillion (2015)
Total equity	CN¥649.78 billion (2011)
Owner	Central Huijin (40.42%) Ministry of Finance (39.21%) National Social Security Fund (3.02%) China Securities Finance (1.92%)
Number of employees	444,238 (2012)
Website	abchina.com

Agricultural Bank of China Limited (ABC, simplified Chinese: 中国农业银行; traditional Chinese: 中國農業銀行; pinyin: Zhōngguó Nóngyè Yínháng), also known as AgBank or 农行 Nóngháng, is one of the "Big Four" banks in the People's Republic of China. It was founded in 1951, and has its headquarters in Dongcheng District, Beijing. It has branches throughout mainland China, Hong Kong, London, Tokyo, New York, Frankfurt, Sydney, Seoul, and Singapore.

ABC has 320 million retail customers, 2.7 million corporate clients, and nearly 24,000 branches. It is China's third largest lender by assets. ABC went public in mid-2010, fetching the world's biggest ever initial public offering (IPO) at the time, since overtaken by another Chinese company, Alibaba. As of 2011, it ranks 8th among the Top 1000 World Banks, meanwhile In 2015, it ranks 3rd in Forbes’ 13th annual Global 2000 ranking of the biggest, most powerful and most valuable companies in the world.

Since the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, ABC has been formed and abolished several times. In 1951, two banks of the Republic of China, Farmers Bank of China and Cooperation Bank, merged to form the Agricultural Cooperation Bank, which ABC regards as its ancestor. However, the bank was merged into People's Bank of China, the central bank in 1952. The first bank bearing the name Agricultural Bank of China was founded in 1955, but it was merged into the central bank in 1957. In 1963 the Chinese government formed another agricultural bank which was also merged into the central bank two years later. Today's Agricultural Bank of China was founded in February 1979. It was restructured to form a holding company called Agricultural Bank of China Limited. It was listed on the Shanghai and Hong Kong stock exchanges in July 2010.