As expected, China Mobile announced that it has entered into a share subscription agreement with Shanghai Pudong Development Bank, through its wholly-owned subsidiary – China Mobile Group Guangdong Company Limited. The world’s largest mobile operator in terms of number of subscribers grabbed 2,207,511,410 A shares to be issued by SPD Bank by way of private placement, representing 20% of the issued shares of SPD Bank as enlarged by the subscription. Each share was sold for 18.03 RMB (about HK$20.50) bringing the total consideration for the subscription to 39.8 billion RMB (approximately HK$45.3 billion).
As part of the deal, China Mobile has also entered into a strategic cooperation memorandum of understanding with SPD Bank (which will lead into a strategic cooperation agreement) to jointly work on development of mobile e-commerce services.
To put it in other words – China Mobile just got itself a bank and is ready to enter the mobile money market. With so many users on its network, they *must* be onto something.