Will ICBC reap profit from Standard Bank after the acquisition?

Industrial & Commercial Bank of China said that it would pay 36.7 billion rand, or $5.6 billion, for a 20 percent stake in Standard Bank Group, the largest African bank, in the biggest overseas acquisition by a mainland Chinese company.

The investment is the third overseas purchase by the chairman of ICBC, Jiang Jianqing, in less than a year comes three days after Citic Securities agreed to invest $1 billion in Bear Stearns, the fifth-largest Wall Street securities firm. Jiang is using the $22 billion that ICBC raised in an initial stock sale a year ago to expand abroad as Citigroup and HSBC set up branches in China.

ICBC is making the biggest foreign investment in South Africa outside of mining since apartheid ended in 1994. Barclays spent 30 billion rand, or $4.5 billion, in 2005 to take control of Absa Group, the biggest consumer bank there.

Standard Bank, which makes the same amount of profit from retail banking as it does from corporate and investment banking, has units in 18 African countries and 21 nations outside the continent. The company is expanding outside South Africa, where it earns most of its profit, to tap increasing trade in commodities and fees from investment banking. Standard Bank has bought banks in Argentina, Nigeria, and Kenya and has said it may make acquisitions in Russia as well as start an operation in India.

Will there be more overseas acquistions to follow for ICBC after the takeover of South Africa's Standard Bank?