As part of its effort to bring in outside expertise and reassure investors, Bank of China has sold stakes worth a total of $5.1 billion to UBS, Singapore’s Temasek Holdings and a consortium led by the Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC.

　　It also recruited a veteran banker in March 2005 from London-based HSBC Corp., Lonnie Dounn, to serve as its credit officer, a pioneering move for a state financial institution but one that appears to have faltered.

　　The Beijing-based bank announced in its IPO prospectus that Dounn has resigned and is due to leave in September. It did not say why he was leaving or who would replace him.

　　While allowing the banks to sell billions of dollars worth of equity to foreign banks and other institutional investors, Beijing has stressed its determination to maintain state control over the strategically important industry, limiting the foreigners’say in management.

　　Bank of China is selling only 10.5 percent of its equity, and even if it exercises an option to sell another 3.84 billion shares, raising the IPO’s proceeds to $11.2 billion, it will be listing only 11.9 percent of its total capital.

　　As of now, the $9.7 billion offering is the world’s biggest since a $10.6 billion IPO by AT&T Wireless Services Inc. in April 2000. It would be the biggest IPO ever for China.

　　The Chinese banks are dwarfed by international competitors such as Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ Ltd., which holds assets worth about 190 trillion Japanese yen ($1.6 trillion) and Citigroup with $1.55 trillion in assets.

　　But investors are attracted less by the size of the banks than the allure of China’s economy, which has been expanding at a rate of about 10 percent for several years， and the performance of other banks’shares, analysts say.

　　China Construction Bank Corp., the country’s third-biggest lender, has seen its share price rise about 50 percent since its $9.2 billion IPO in October. Shanghai-based Bank of Communications Co.’s share price has more than doubled.

　　"Some people were holding out, they were not convinced by the story, but then they were kicking themselves after the stock price" for other banks rose, said Wei of Moody’s in Hong Kong. "So now there’s a speculative effect where investors are being egged on to invest by others."