How does political influence on personnelappointments affect the large state-ownedfinancial institutions?Executives in the large state-owned financial institutionsare also effectively high-level governmentofficials, in practice if not in theory. This is evidentin the following three aspects:First, they all have political ranks similar to localand central government officials. For example, thepolitical rank of the CEO of Bank of China is thesame level as that of a vice president of the PBOC,or a vice governor of a province. One of the reasonsthat political ranks matter is that they providebanks with bargaining power with local governmentofficials who are often of lower ranks. Providingbank executives with political rank grantsthem implicit political capital that they can use tobargain with local governments on terms of loans,including resisting pressure to make uneconomicloans for political reasons. But, this does not preventa local official from using connections with ahigher-ranking patron to create sufficient pressureto get their way, and interestingly may make themmore susceptible to this form of political pressurefrom above.Second, the highest executives in the banks are allappointed by the Organization Department of theparty, comparable to the manner by which all thehigh-level local government officials and centralgovernment officials are appointed. Political integrityis one of the most important factors underconsideration for their appointment. Given thehierarchical nature of the party structure, this impliesa requirement to take very seriously the viewsof higher ranking party officials.Third, many bank executives ultimately aspire totop government jobs. The government divisionsthey move to include the regulators of the financeindustry, such as the PBOC or the Ministry of Finance,but also include local government positions,such as provincial leader, and central governmentappointments, such as vice prime minister. FormerPrime Minister Zhu Rongji, for example, oncewas the CEO of China Construction Bank. Somescholars believe that this appointment system distortsthe incentives of the executives (See Allen,Qian, Zhang and Zhao, 2012 for references). Thisis because taking their future career path into account,executives’ decisions about bank operationsmay not be completely based on their institutionalinterests. Financial institutions are thus utilizedas tools to acquire political capital for their futurepromotions.
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