The predecessor of the Bank is Agricultural Cooperative Bank, established in 1951. Since the late 1970s, the Bank has evolved from a state-owned specialized bank to a wholly state-owned commercial bank and subsequently a state-controlled commercial bank. The Bank was restructured into a joint stock limited liability company in January 2009. In July 2010, the Bank was listed on both the Shanghai Stock Exchange and the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, which marked the completion of our transformation into a public shareholding commercial bank.
As one of the major integrated financial service providers in China, the Bank is committed to building a multi-functional and integrated modern financial service group. Capitalizing on its comprehensive business portfolio, extensive distribution network and advanced IT platform, the Bank provides a range of corporate and retail banking products and services for a broad range of customers and conducts treasury operations and asset management. Our business scope also includes, among other things, investment banking, fund management, financial leasing and life insurance. At the end of 2015, the Bank had total assets of RMB17,791,393 million, loans and advances to customers of RMB8,909,918 million and deposits of RMB13,538,360 million. Our capital adequacy ratio was 13.40%. The Bank achieved a net profit of RMB180, 774 million in 2015.
The Bank had 23,670 domestic branch outlets at the end of 2015, including the Head Office, the Business Department of the Head Office, three specialized business units managed by the Head Office, 37 tier-1 branches (including branches directly managed by the Head Office), 362 tier-2 branches (including business departments of branches in provinces), 3,513 tier-1 sub-branches(including business departments in municipalities, business departments of branches directly managed by the Head Office and business departments of tier-2 branches), 19,698 foundation-level branch outlets, and 55 other establishments. Our overseas branch outlets consisted of nine overseas branches and three overseas representative offices. The Bank had fourteen major subsidiaries, including nine domestic subsidiaries and five overseas subsidiaries.
The Bank was included in the list of Global Systemically Important Banks for two consecutive years since 2014. In 2015, the Bank ranked No. 36 in Fortune’s Global 500, and ranked No. 6 in The Banker’s “Top 1000 World Banks” list in terms of tier 1 capital. The Bank’s issuer credit ratings were assigned A/A-1 by Standard & Poor’s; the Bank’s deposits ratings were assigned A1/P-1 by Moody’s Investors Service; and the long-/short-term issuer default ratings were assigned A/F1 by Fitch Ratings.