A Chinese consortium was the biggest buyer of the China Construction Bank stake that Bank of America sold last month, according to several people familiar with the deal, the FT reports. The State Administration of Foreign Exchange, which manages most of China’s $3,200bn in foreign reserves, the National Social Security Fund, and Citic Securities bought the CCB shares. Bank of America sold 13.1bn shares in the Chinese lender – half of its 10 per cent holding – generating $8.3bn in cash for the troubled US bank, and increasing its tier one capital buffer by $3.5bn. The Chinese government’s involvement comes as domestic bank shares are under pressure due to big capital raising exercises. Beijing asked Bank of America to sell only half its holdings in CCB, China’s second-largest bank by market capitalisation, the people added. A person close to BofA said selling more of the CCB stake “would have been largely incremental” in reinforcing the bank’s capital position “so it made sense to structure the sale the way we did”. He added that not all of the shares could be sold until next year “so selling the entire position was not an option”. Read more