China Development Bank

— With more than 2 trillion yuan (£130 billion) in outstanding loans and near-complete dominance of bond sales in its domestic market, CDB has begun to look outside its national borders for loan growth.

— Founded in 1994, it has used its position as a strategic banking arm of the Communist Party to become China’s most profitable lender, breaking the $2 billion profit level in 2004. It does not take retail deposits.

— Under its governor, Chen Yuan, CDB has become the biggest financial backer of China’s massive civil engineering and public works programme. As well as hundreds of infrastructure and transport schemes, it was CDB loans that built the Three Gorges dam, and which financed the country’s largest nuclear power plant in Quinshan.

— Viewed by some as the principal tool of China’s so-called “soft diplomacy” projects in the developing world, CDB has spent the past 18 months in a flurry of overseas funding schemes. It has struck deals to finance projects in Pakistan and Kazakhstan and financed China’s move into the Russian oil province of Sakhalin by lending money there.

Temasek

— What started as a government-run development bank for companies in Singapore has grown into one of Asia’s most aggressive “sovereign funds” – a new breed of investor that has begun to flex its muscles globally.

— Less than 45 per cent of Temasek’s $80 billion of assets are now centred on Singapore: the fund is the biggest foreign investor in Chinese banks, is a big player in the global shrimp market and indirectly triggered the coup that brought down Thailand’s billionaire Prime Minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, by doing a deal with him to buy part of his mobile phone empire.

— It has been linked with bids for airports in the US and the UK and property and energy plays elsewhere.

— Countries such as South Korea and China, whose governments are keen to invest in debt, equity and alternative asset classes, have sought to imitate Temasek’s strategy.

— Temasek also embodies the more controversial side of sovereign funds – particularly the central conflict of interest in which central banks should pursue financial stability, while funds should naturally seek opportunity and volatility.

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