The move is seen as a way of boosting fair competition between local and foreign financial institutions.

At the Third National Conference on Financial Work in early 2007, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said that China would facilitate fair competition between domestic and foreign financial institutions.

As the government opens the banking sector to meet its World Trade Organization commitments, the human resources battle for the best and brightest in the financial sector has escalated as well.

HSBC expects to grow its headcount from 3,000 to 4,000 in China this year and Citigroup plans to hire about 1,000 extra people. Standard Chartered said it did not have a specific target this year but hired 1,000 in 2006.

Finding enough experienced staff and training them adequately was the toughest issue confronting the bank, HSBC China chief executive Richard Yorke said earlier this year.

"There is no real finance education in Chinese colleges," noticed Wang Zhao, an economist with Beijing University's China Center for Economic Research.

"The so-called finance (education) in colleges only consisted of macro-control measures, such as monetary policy, that hark back to the days of the planned economy. What Chinese students want now is courses on securities analysis and portfolio management," he said.