Senior management of ICBC and Huarong are exploring new ways to cooperate, the official newspaper said, without providing more details, according to Bloomberg. Rival Bank of China and Orient Asset Management Co in April agreed to work together in bad loan disposal, credit-rating, insurance and asset management, the paper said.

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China set up Huarong, Orient, Cinda Asset Management Corp, and Great Wall Asset Management Corp in 1999 to clean up the balance sheets of the nation's four biggest financial services companies and China Development Bank, saddled with bad loans built up during decades of government-directed lending to unprofitable state enterprises.

The companies, which got a combined 1.4 trillion yuan (US$184 billion) of non-performing loans at inception, were required to finish the disposal by the end of 2006.

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