The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China has reached an agreement with the Bank of East Asia on an equity transaction, in which ICBC will acquire a 70% stake in the Canadian subsidiary of BEA for CAD80.25 million. Under the agreement, ICBC will pay CAD80.25 million, to acquire the 70% stake while BEA will hold the [...]

TSYS today announced that China UnionPay Data Services Company, TSYS’ joint venture with China UnionPay, has signed a long-term credit card processing agreement with the Bank of East Asia.
BEA is the first foreign bank to independently launch its own credit card program in China. BEA has the largest number of operating outlets of any foreign [...]

Both gold and silver recovered from their sell-offs in early morning trading in the Far East yesterday. Both spiked upwards about 15 minutes before the Comex open...and were subsequently capped at their highs of the day very shortly after that.

Depositors at the Bank of East Asia lined up for hours to withdraw their money. I wouldn't characterize it as a 'run' but it is pretty darn close. S&P and Moody's both lowered their credit rating for Bank of East Asia from 'stable' to 'negative' when it restated its earnings for the first half of this year.The root of the problem was big paper losses on the bank's derivative holdings.

In the wake of global financial events, a couple of articles have caught my attention in terms of implications for the dollar. First was this Reuters account of a People's Daily editorial, suggesting "diversification". But it's hard to discern the underlying message given the low signal to noise ratio in official publications. Today's article in the IHT is a little more informative, not just about what's going on in China but in Asia (where a lot of that "saving glut" was alleged to come from):

In Asia, bloom is off the U.S. rose

By Keith Bradsher, Published: September 18, 2008

HONG KONG: Tremors from Wall Street are rattling Asian confidence, leading many investors to question the wisdom of being invested in the United States to the tune of trillions of dollars.

Asian investors were starting to show hesitation even before the financial earthquake of the last week. Now, a wariness toward the

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