Britain's HSBC said Wednesday it would sell its stake in China's second largest life insurer Ping An to a Thai firm for $9.4 billion, in a shift back towards its traditional banking business.

The lender said it would sell its entire 15.57 percent holding in Ping An Insurance Group to diversified conglomerate Charoen Pokphand Group at HK$59 ($7.66) a share, making it the biggest foreign purchase by a Thai firm.

Ping An recently hit the headlines after the New York Times said in reports in October and November that Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao's relatives benefited ahead of its 2004 Hong Kong listing by buying stock at a discount.

The insurer has denied those claims and threatened legal action against the newspaper.

HSBC Group Chief Executive Stuart Gulliver said in a statement the sale would benefit shareholders, but added that China remained "a key market for the group".

He said the bank would "strengthen our focus on growing our own operations and building on our long-term strategic banking partnership with the Bank of Communications", China's fifth largest lender, in which HSBC has a 19 percent stake.

HSBC, which first bought into Ping An in 2002, has been selling its non-core assets as part of a broad restructuring plan designed to boost profitability.

"They can unload their non-core assets and resources to refocus on their main business, which is banking," said Tanrich Securities Vice President Jackson Wong.

London and Hong Kong-listed HSBC is also setting aside hundreds of millions of dollars as provision for fines related to possible criminal charges over money-laundering allegations in the United States.

Ping An, an insurance and financial services conglomerate, credited HSBC for helping it grow its business and said it did not plan to make any changes to strategy with the new stakeholder.

"Charoen Pokphand Group agrees with Ping An's strategic culture and business model and has full trust and confidence in Ping An's management team," Ping An spokesman Sheng Ruisheng told AFP.

Charoen Pokphand, backed by Thai tycoon Dhanin Chearavanont, began as an agricultural business but has grown into a huge conglomerate with interests in sectors from retail to telecoms and software solutions to real estate.

It saw annual revenue of more than $33 billion in 2011.

The firm was one of the first overseas agribusiness companies to invest in China in the late 1970s and now accounts for more than a quarter of its poultry exports.

Shares in Ping An surged 4.94 percent to HK$60.50 in Hong Kong, while HSBC ended 1.65 percent higher at HK$80.0.

A Ping An official, who declined to be identified, told AFP on Wednesday that HSBC started negotiations on the sale "long ago" in advance of the New York Times stories.

The paper said Ping An chairman Ma Mingzhe lobbied Wen in 1999, when he was a vice-premier, and his wife as the government considered a decision on whether to split up the company.

News: The Daily Star/Bangladesh/6th-Dec-12