CICC Brand Guidelines: A 1995 Joint-Venture Bank, a 2015 Listing & a 2026 Merger

A state bank, a Wall Street firm and three partners.

China International Capital Corporation, known as CICC and in Chinese by the short name Zhongjin, was incorporated on 31 July 1995, English Wikipedia says. Its founders were China Construction Bank, Morgan Stanley, China National Investment and Guaranty, the Singapore sovereign fund GIC and the Mingly Corporation. At the start the construction bank held 42.5 per cent and Morgan Stanley 35 per cent. English Wikipedia describes CICC as the first Sino-foreign joint-venture investment bank, and Chinese Wikipedia calls it the first such bank in mainland China. Its headquarters are in Beijing.

Chinese Wikipedia says its main business was arranging financing and listings at home and abroad for large state-owned companies. Its Hong Kong securities arm dates from 1997 in English Wikipedia and 1998 in Chinese Wikipedia; offices in Shanghai followed, with brokerage branches in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen. In 1997 it worked on the Hong Kong listing of the company now called China Mobile, which English Wikipedia says marked the start of the restructuring and overseas listing of large state-owned groups. Chinese Wikipedia lists further mandates: China Unicom, Sinopec and PetroChina in 2000, the overseas listing of China Life in 2003 and the joint Shanghai and Hong Kong listing of ICBC in 2006.

Chinese Wikipedia also records the firm’s widening licences: it was among the first sponsor institutions in 2004, gained approval for direct investment in 2007, and in 2010 began proprietary A-share trading, margin financing and work as a market maker on the interbank market. In 2016, it adds, CICC joined the Ministry of Finance and the National Development and Reform Commission in setting up a national guidance fund for venture investment in emerging industries. In the regulator’s 2021 classification of 103 securities companies, CICC was rated AA, unchanged from 2020.

From partners to a listed company.

The founding partners did not stay. In 2004, English Wikipedia says, China Construction Bank passed its stake to China Jianyin Investment, which later passed it to Central Huijin, a wholly owned subsidiary of China Investment Corporation. Morgan Stanley agreed at the end of 2010 to sell its holding; English Wikipedia names the buyers as TPG, KKR, GIC and Great Eastern. In 2014, Chinese Wikipedia says, the securities regulator issued CICC a warning letter after finding that it had arranged publicity articles about a company whose listing it was underwriting, and that listing was postponed.

In 2015 CICC became a joint-stock company and, on 9 November 2015, listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange under the code 3908. Its A shares trade in Shanghai under the code 601995, Chinese Wikipedia says. In November 2016 it agreed to buy China Investment Securities from Central Huijin in an all-share deal, which Chinese Wikipedia says was completed on 21 March 2017 and which brought about two hundred brokerage branches. In September 2017 Tencent subscribed for new H shares, about 5 per cent, and signed a strategic cooperation agreement on wealth-management services; in the same year CICC took a majority of KraneShares, an American provider of exchange-traded funds focused on Chinese companies.

One step was about the name itself. On 13 August 2019, Chinese Wikipedia says, China Investment Securities was renamed China CICC Wealth Management Securities, in Chinese and in English, to unify the brand; in July 2021 CICC moved its domestic wealth-management business into that subsidiary, keeping investment banking, fixed income and asset management at the parent.

How the category presents itself.

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.

Three brokers under one name.

The latest chapter is a merger. On 19 November 2025, The Business Times reported, CICC proposed a share-swap merger with Dongxing Securities and Cinda Securities; the paper noted that Central Huijin was CICC’s largest shareholder, with about 40 per cent, and the ultimate controller of both smaller brokers. In September 2026 CICC announced that the China Securities Regulatory Commission had approved and registered the merger by absorption and cleared the related changes in major shareholders. The law firm Clifford Chance, which advised CICC, said the transaction was completed on 26 October 2026.

CICC uses two names. In Chinese it is Zhongjin, the short form also used in subsidiary names such as CICC Wealth Management, CICC Capital and CICC Futures; in English the four initials appear on its overseas arms. Chinese Wikipedia lists CICC US Securities in New York since 2009, with a San Francisco office from 2017, subsidiaries in Singapore from 2008 and the United Kingdom from 2009, and CICC Deutschland in Germany. English Wikipedia adds offices in Tokyo, and gives CICC more than two hundred branches in mainland China. Chinese Wikipedia names its main departments as investment banking, equities, fixed income, private equity, asset management, wealth management and research.

For a design guide, CICC shows how a set of initials can carry a joint-venture bank, a listed group and a merged brokerage, with a Chinese short name running alongside. Compare Huatai Securities, a Nanjing broker listed in three cities, and China Life, whose 2003 overseas listing CICC worked on. For this guide we use a lacquer red, an old gold and a warm paper with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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