(Yicai) April 30 -- Industrial and Commercial Bank of China and China Construction Bank, the largest of the nation's four big lenders, have selected two new deputy party secretaries, paving the way for them to assume the presidency of each bank.

Liu Jun, a former president at Bank of Communications, will become the deputy party chief at the ICBC, and Zhang Yi, an ex-vice president at Bank of China, will take up the same role at CCB, the lenders said in separate statements today.

By convention, they will become each bank’s president after completing the necessary appointment and regulatory approval procedures. ICBC and CCB have been running without since Liao Lin and Zhang Jinliang were promoted to the chairmanships of their respective lenders in February and last month.

Liu made history at BoCom in July 2020 when he became the first president of a big state bank born after 1970. He is also chief supervisor of the National Association of Financial Market Institutional Investors, a self-regulatory organization in China's interbank market.

Zhang became a vice president at Bank of China in March last year. Before that, he was VP at Agricultural Bank of China. His name will be familiar at CCB, as he worked there for over a decade. Zhang was briefly its chief financial officer in 2021 before leaving for AgBank.

Before joining BoCom, Liu was deputy general manager of sovereign wealth fund China Investment in 2016. Prior to that, he worked for asset manager and investor China Everbright Group for more than two decades, including as its deputy chairman and vice GM, along with a number of earlier roles at China Everbright Bank.

Liu's expertise spans fintech, financial governance, international use of the Chinese yuan, and wealth management. He has a doctoral degree in business administration from Hong Kong Polytechnic University and a master's from Northeastern State University in the United States.

Editors: Tang Shihua, Emmi Laine