Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Ltd., China's biggest lender by assets, is expected to list its shares in Hong Kong as early as September, a news report said Tuesday, joining a state banks listing parade. Its initial public offering (IPO) is estimated at 100 billion Hong Kong dollars, one of the highest in the world, the Xinhua-run Shanghai Securities News said, dwarfing the 75.4 billion Hong Kong dollars IPO made by Bank of China, the nation's No. 2 lender, in May. ICBC president Yang Kaisheng, quoted by the paper, said the bank has a "concrete timetable" for its listing preparations. China hopes its "big four" state banks, including ICBC, BOC, China Construction Bank and Agricultural Bank of China, strengthen corporate governance and streamline operation through market listing, while foreign investors are also eager to buy Chinese bank shares to tap into the sizzling Chinese economy. The Bank of China shares were snapped up on its June 1 debut and soared more than 20 percent by Monday, defying jitters about the recent turmoil in Asian stock markets. The Xinhua newspaper said ICBC plans to submit its listing application next week to the Hong Kong stock exchange for scrutiny, citing an unnamed senior manager of the bank. It added China's banking regulator gave the nod for the bank's IPO plan in mid-March. ICBC is also projected to issue the renminbi-denominated A-shares in China's inland market soon after its Hong Kong listing. A previewing view among Chinese brokerages is that the bank's A-share offering will be materialized later this year, if market conditions are suitable. China's stock market surged in recent months -- but followed by sharp declines on worries that more fund-raising activity by large state-owned firms would divert cash from existing stocks. ICBC chairman Jiang Jianqing has said he expects the bank, by stock market value, to become one of the world's top 10 banks, with 2006 business profits exceeding 100 billion yuan (12.5 billion U.S. dollars). Chinese banks have piled up a mountain of problem debts over the past decades due to reckless, usually government-ordered, lending to state-owned enterprises, sapping their competitiveness, analysts acknowledge. However they have been moving to shed off hefty bad debts, push forward joint-stock reform, invite foreign investors, try to secure stock market listings and take other measures to help upgrade business prior to fully opening the country's financial markets to foreign rivals -- under a commitment to the World Trade Organization -- by the end of this year. ICBC was transformed into a joint-stock company in October 2005, assuming all business and relevant assets and debts of the former solely state-owned bank, with the Ministry of Finance and Central Huijin Investment Co. Ltd., a central government investment arm, each holding a 50 percent stake. Months later, a foreign trio of Goldman Sachs, American Express and Allianz Group paid a combined 3.78 billion U.S. dollars for a 8.89 percent stake in the ICBC, the biggest-ever amount of foreign investment in China's banking industry. The bank now boasts 18,000 business outlets in China's mainland, serving more than 4 million enterprises and more than 100 million individual clients. Its capital adequacy ratio (CAR), the measure of its available capital in proportion to its outstanding loans, rose to 10.26 percent by the end of last year, already above the 8 percent requirement by the international standard. The bank's non-performing loan ratio fell to 4.43 percent by 2005, coming closer to the 1-2 percent level reported by sophisticated foreign banks. China Construction Bank took the lead in the "big four" state banks to list its shares in Hong Kong last October. Agricultural Bank of China also said it would seek to list shares as a whole.