Bank of America Corp, the third-biggest United States bank, yesterday denied a report that it sold shares in China Construction Bank Corp.

''We have not sold our CCB stake,'' BOA spokesman Robert Stickler said in a phone interview with Bloomberg News from Charlotte, North Carolina. He declined to comment on whether the bank may sell CCB shares in the future.

BOA is selling as many as 6 billion shares in the Chinese bank at a discount of as much as 17 percent from the lender's Friday closing price, the Apple Daily newspaper reported yesterday, citing people it didn't identify. The sale, to be completed before the market opened yesterday, would raise as much as US$3 billion, the report said.

CCB's Beijing-based spokesman Yu Baoyue said the bank has been told by the US bank that it isn't planning the sale outlined by Apple Daily. BOA last month almost doubled its three-year-old stake in CCB. The US bank, which is buying Merrill Lynch & Co, lifted its holding to 19.13 percent from 10.8 percent by buying shares from China SAFE Investments Ltd, a state investment arm that is the Beijing-based bank's biggest stakeholder.

BOA first invested in CCB in June 2005, buying a US$3 billion stake before the lender was publicly listed. It invested another US$1.9 billion in June. The value of its holding almost tripled, to US$14.5 billion, as of September 30.

(Shanghai Daily December 16, 2008)