China Galaxy Securities Brand Guidelines: A 2000 Lineage, Two Listings & CGS International

A brokerage assembled from the securities arms of state banks and trust companies.

China Galaxy Securities is a Beijing-based brokerage and investment bank, and its history begins before the company that carries the name today. Chinese Wikipedia says its predecessor, a limited-liability company also called China Galaxy Securities, was set up on 22 August 2000 with State Council approval. It took over the securities departments and branch offices of the four large state banks — the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, the Agricultural Bank of China, the Bank of China and China Construction Bank — together with those of several state trust and investment companies, including the trust arms of Huarong, Great Wall, Orient, Cinda and PICC. In 2002, the same source says, it also took over the securities offices of another trust company that had gone into bankruptcy liquidation.

A holding-company structure followed in 2005. Chinese Wikipedia says China Galaxy Financial Holdings was formed that year and reorganised the business: the securities operations moved into a newly formed joint-stock company, and the older limited company was renamed China Galaxy Investment Management.

English Wikipedia gives the founding date of the present company as 26 January 2007. Galaxy Financial Holdings contributed 99.89 percent of the issued capital, it says, and the remaining 0.11 percent came from four other promoters: Beijing Tsinghua Venture Capital (now known as Qingyuan Defeng), Chongqing Water, China General and CNBM. English Wikipedia describes the firm as a state-owned brokerage and investment bank. Chinese Wikipedia gives its Chinese name as 中国银河证券 and lists the shorter forms China Galaxy Securities and Galaxy Securities, or 银河证券. The company’s website, at chinastock.com.cn, gives a head-office address in Beijing.

Two listings, an index place and a fund stake.

The company went public in Hong Kong first. Chinese Wikipedia dates its listing on the main board of the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong to 22 May 2013, under the code 6881; English Wikipedia places the debut in May 2013. A Shanghai listing followed on 23 January 2017, under the code 601881, which Chinese Wikipedia says made it the ninth Chinese broker with shares listed in both Shanghai and Hong Kong. Since June 2017, English Wikipedia says, it has been a constituent of the SSE 50, the Shanghai Stock Exchange’s blue-chip index.

The company’s website lists a wide range of licensed business, including securities brokerage, margin financing, the sale of public securities funds, fund custody and market making in listed securities and stock options. In July 2018, Chinese Wikipedia says, the group acquired a 50 percent stake in Galaxy Fund, a fund manager carrying the same name. English Wikipedia describes a board of eleven directors — two executive, five non-executive and four independent non-executive — elected for three-year terms.

Regulatory classification is public in China. In the China Securities Regulatory Commission’s 2021 classification of 103 securities companies, published on 24 July 2021, Galaxy Securities was rated AA, unchanged from 2020, according to Chinese Wikipedia.

The name also travels outside mainland China. Chinese Wikipedia dates to June 2017 the agreement under which Galaxy bought 50 percent of CIMB Securities International, the regional brokerage of Malaysia’s CIMB Group; the joint business traded as CGS-CIMB. A February 2024 company announcement, carried by the Thai news site Thaipublica, said the parent raised its stake by a further quarter in December 2021 and bought the remaining quarter in December 2023. From 5 February 2024 the Thai unit took the name CGS International Securities (Thailand), shortened to CGSI.

Brokers, insurers and their wordmarks.

China’s large insurers and securities firms are mostly listed groups with sizeable state shareholders, and many trade in more than one market, typically Shanghai or Shenzhen alongside Hong Kong, and in a few cases London. Their brands therefore have to work in at least two scripts. A full Chinese company name usually sits beside a shorter Chinese form and a set of English initials, as with PICC and 人保, or CPIC and 太保, and designers need all three versions to stay recognisable together.

The visual language this guide looks at includes wordmarks in reds, blues and golds, lettering with roots in Chinese calligraphy, and square, seal-like symbols that echo a traditional name chop. Websites and reports commonly pair those marks with photography of office towers and city skylines, and with images of the people and places the companies serve.

The products shape the pages. Insurers organise their sites around life, property, health and pension cover, policy and claims services and branch finders, while securities firms present brokerage, investment banking, asset management and the wealth apps through which retail investors trade. Group sites often link out to separate websites for each subsidiary, each carrying the parent’s initials.

Much of the most carefully designed material is financial reporting. Annual and interim reports, results presentations and ESG or sustainability reports are published in simplified Chinese, traditional Chinese and English for investors on several exchanges, and they set the tone that the rest of a brand often follows. This guide sets out what can be checked about each company — when it was founded, who owns it and where it is listed — and marks clearly what rests on the company’s own word.

A Beijing broker with a Southeast Asian arm.

The Southeast Asian business carries the brand abroad. The Bangkok Post reported on 11 May 2024 that CGS International, the overseas arm of China Galaxy Securities, had about 2,200 employees across Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia, and that China Galaxy Securities had taken full ownership of the Thai unit, previously called CGS-CIMB Securities (Thailand), in December 2023. The paper described the parent as China’s second-largest securities firm, and reported that over the previous year and a half the business had obtained investment-banking licences in Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore and Thailand and asset-management licences in Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand. The same report said the Thai business dated back to late 1999.

The regional unit now publicises its own rankings. In a July 2026 announcement, CGS International said it had kept its position as the top ASEAN broker in the 2026 Extel Asia Local Broker Survey for the second year running, and it describes itself as a link between China, ASEAN and global capital markets. Those are company statements.

For a design reader, the naming is the point to note. The parent uses the full name China Galaxy Securities and the initials CGS; the international business uses CGS International and, in Thailand, CGSI. The parent’s own website sits at chinastock.com.cn rather than at an address built on the word Galaxy.

For a design guide, China Galaxy Securities shows how a state-owned broker assembled from many predecessors can settle on one name and a short set of initials. Compare CITIC Securities and CICC, two other Chinese securities houses. For this guide we use a deep red, a navy and a warm stone with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep China Galaxy Securities’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.