Three year wait for ABC plan

It will take up to three years before a plan emerges on how to restructure debt-ridden Agricultural Bank of China (ABC), China Banking Regulatory Commission chairman Liu Mingkang said. The huge debts on ABC's books thought to be more than US$90 billion meant no timetable had been drawn up yet and regulators are still considering whether to seek strategic investors, the South China Morning Post reported. ABC is the only one of the Big Four state banks yet to receive a government bail-out. Last month, central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan said ABC could well be abandoned as a lost cause and broken up.