China's bank shares set to perform best

  

China's banks will outpace their peers in India and Indonesia, the best performers in Asia's banking industry over the past decade, to deliver the highest returns over the next five to 10 years, analysis firm CLSA Ltd said.

The top eight performers among Asian banks over the past decade were all from India, with gains of 400 percent to 3,000 percent, CLSA said in a research report released today.

Indonesian banks ranked second over a three-to-five-year period, as no data was available for 10 years, the report said.

The two countries recorded the highest credit growth, as India's loans increased 622 percent over the past 10 years, followed by 508 percent growth in Indonesia, Daniel Tabbush and Suangsuda Sinsadok, analysts at CLSA, said in the report.

That shows "positive" implications for China's banks given the nation's 326 percent increase in loan growth over that period, they wrote in their analysis.

"Where China stock price data is only recent, we can at least assume that the fact that those banks are returning the third-highest loan growth over the past five and 10 years can in fact mean strong total returns over the long term," the analysts wrote.

China's loan growth of 79 percent was the highest over the past three years, according to the report by CLSA, which is "overweight" on the nation's bank stocks as well as those in India and Indonesia.