---
title: "Facing challenges head-on and pragmatically breaking through, the shareholders' meeting releases new signals for the development of China Merchants Bank"
type: "News"
locale: "en"
url: "https://longbridge.com/en/news/290902628.md"
description: "China Merchants Bank held its 2025 annual general meeting, clarifying that the investment in Ping An H shares is of a financial nature, alleviating concerns over equity changes. The new management team made its appearance, addressing challenges such as narrowing interest margins. The bank officially established a market value management organizational structure, led by the vice president, to create a closed-loop system for value creation, investor communication, and capital tool utilization. The dividend payout ratio for 2025 has been raised to 35.34%, with a total exceeding 50 billion yuan, and the dividend yield surpassing 5.5%, demonstrating a commitment to long-term allocation value and the importance of shareholder rights"
datetime: "2026-06-26T02:12:31.000Z"
locales:
  - [zh-CN](https://longbridge.com/zh-CN/news/290902628.md)
  - [en](https://longbridge.com/en/news/290902628.md)
  - [zh-HK](https://longbridge.com/zh-HK/news/290902628.md)
---

# Facing challenges head-on and pragmatically breaking through, the shareholders' meeting releases new signals for the development of China Merchants Bank

> Regarding the market's concern about Ping An's stake in H shares, the management clarified its positioning as a financial investment, with a core focus on stable high dividend returns, and there are no significant strategic changes, alleviating market concerns about equity uncertainties.

**Produced by | Zhongfang Network**

**Reviewed by | Li Xiaoyan**

On June 25, China Merchants Bank held its 2025 annual shareholders' meeting at the Shenzhen headquarters, which is viewed by the capital market as a key window to observe the development direction of the banking sector leaders. On one side are the ongoing market discussions about undervalued stock prices, dividends, and market value maintenance issues, while on the other side is the new leader's first public appearance, directly addressing common industry challenges such as narrowing interest margins and growth pressures. The executive team candidly responded to all core market concerns, neither avoiding current operational pain points nor shying away from presenting a complete medium- to long-term development roadmap, providing reassurance to value investors.

In the past two years, the overall valuation of the banking sector has remained low, and China Merchants Bank, which has been deeply engaged in the retail sector, has also struggled to break out of the volatile market. Many long-term shareholders have expectations for stock price performance. The most notable initiative at this shareholders' meeting was the formal establishment of a dedicated market value management organizational structure, led by Vice President and Financial Officer Peng Jiawen, to coordinate all market value-related work across the board, regularly conducting market assessment meetings to bridge the gap between capital market demands and internal operational decisions.

Unlike most listed banks that only sporadically engage in investor communication, China Merchants Bank has broken down market value management into a three-tier logical closed loop. The foundational layer is value creation from operations, relying on stable operational strength to solidify shareholder returns; the middle layer establishes regular investor communication channels to eliminate market information asymmetry and fully convey core competitive advantages such as wealth management and asset quality; the top layer flexibly utilizes capital tools such as dividends and share buybacks to optimize market value performance. The implementation of this complete system also demonstrates the management's recognition of valuation pressure and its emphasis on the rights of minority shareholders.

In terms of dividends, China Merchants Bank has long maintained an industry-leading level, with a dividend ratio written into the company's articles of association, maintaining a bottom line of 30%, and further increasing the annual dividend ratio to 35.34% for 2025, with a total annual dividend exceeding 50 billion yuan. Based on current secondary market stock price calculations, the dividend yield exceeds 5.5%, and in a low-interest-rate environment, its high dividend attribute provides strong long-term allocation value. However, there are also objective concerns in the market; the premise for the continued realization of high dividends is the stability of the bank's profitability, and the continuously narrowing net interest margin remains a core constraint suppressing profit growth and limiting further increases in dividends.

The year 2021 was a critical turning point for China Merchants Bank's stock price trajectory. Multiple external environments combined with industry cycle changes led to a deep adjustment in stock prices. Even relying on the dividend market for temporary recovery, it again entered a volatile downward trend in the second half of last year. Looking at the longer cycle, the past growth dividends of retail banks are fading, with slowing demand for household credit and rising costs of liabilities due to increased fixed-term deposits, coupled with an industry interest rate decline cycle, leading to a general ceiling on profit growth for joint-stock banks. This is also a realistic challenge that the newly appointed President Wang Xiaoqing focused on analyzing at this shareholders' meeting Wang Xiaoqing, who has a diverse background in banking, securities, asset management, and regulation, made his public debut as the proposed president this time. His rich background in major asset investment has led the market to have high expectations for his asset allocation and wealth management strategies. He candidly stated that the current operating environment is fraught with challenges: the industry's net interest margin continues to decline, and the unique advantage of China Merchants Bank's high demand deposits has instead become a shortcoming during the interest rate cut cycle, with limited room for reducing costs on the liability side. Financial report data intuitively confirms the pressure, with a year-on-year decline of 12 basis points in net interest margin by 2025, and a further drop in the first quarter of 2026, with profit growth only maintaining a slight single-digit increase, and weak revenue growth momentum, which is an unavoidable operational shortcoming at present.

In the face of cyclical pressure, Wang Xiaoqing did not propose a short-term aggressive expansion plan, but instead established "four major operational disciplines" as the bottom line for medium to long-term development. The core bottom line is to strictly maintain asset quality, clearly stating that they will never rely on overdrawn future asset quality to exchange for current revenue, abandoning short-term scale impulses, and adhering to long-term stable operational logic. At the same time, they will continue to focus on the core track of retail wealth management and increase investment in digital technology, with all operational actions centered around customer needs, rejecting the rough operating model of seeking quick success.

Relying on the four major disciplines, China Merchants Bank plans five new growth drivers, focusing on deep exploration of existing customers. Currently, the bank has over 227 million individual customers and nearly 3.8 million corporate customers, with significant room for deepening in the existing market; continuously amplifying the differentiated advantages of wealth management to meet residents' asset preservation needs; building a specialized service system by industry, balancing traditional physical enterprises with new productive forces in scientific and technological innovation; releasing growth potential in regional branches such as the Yangtze River Delta, Chengdu-Chongqing, and Pearl River Delta; and optimizing customer service, operational efficiency, and risk control through digital technology, using technological soft power to hedge against cyclical pressure.

On the asset allocation side, the management has also provided a clear long-term plan. They anticipate that the low interest rate environment will continue over the next three to five years, with the proportion of bond asset allocation stabilizing at 30%-32%, and investment returns relying more on trading opportunities brought by interest rate fluctuations; the equity investment side will focus on new productive forces, strictly adhering to the principle of balanced allocation of major assets and controlling risk exposure. In response to shareholders' concerns about wealth management competition, Wang Xiaoqing broke down China Merchants Bank's unique five-step asset allocation service system, from customer profiling, plan customization, product selection, continuous tracking to dynamic reallocation, forming a complete service closed loop, calmly borrowing the online operational advantages of internet platforms while relying on an offline professional investment advisory system to build differentiated barriers.

Regarding the market's attention to Ping An's stake in H shares, the management clarified that its positioning is as a financial investment, primarily focusing on stable high dividend returns, with no significant strategic changes, dispelling market concerns about equity uncertainties.

Objectively speaking, China Merchants Bank currently faces multiple constraints: the net interest margin continues to be under pressure, compressing profit space, retail business growth has entered a stage of existing competition, the overall market sentiment in the banking industry is weak, and there is a lack of catalysts for a significant rebound in stock prices in the short term. However, it cannot be ignored that the bank is simultaneously adjusting its response from three dimensions: organizational structure, operational strategy, and capital return: senior management is leading market value management to open communication channels, medium to long-term development planning is anchored on a stable high-quality route, high dividends continue to fulfill shareholder returns, and the new management team possesses both asset management and banking operational experience, providing a more relevant market perspective on major assets and wealth tracks The restoration of confidence in the capital market is not achieved overnight; short-term valuation recovery still requires waiting for fundamental signals such as interest rate stabilization and revenue growth rebound. However, the signals released at this shareholders' meeting are very clear: China Merchants Bank no longer avoids market doubts, actively builds mechanisms to address shareholder demands, and simultaneously abandons short-term scale games, focusing on asset quality, wealth management, and digitalization to refine long-term competitiveness. As a benchmark for domestic retail banks, this development path that balances shareholder returns and prudent operations, along with the subsequent pace of fundamental improvement, is worth continuous tracking and observation by investors

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