BANK of East Asia said yesterday it aims to take a bite of the high net worth management market on the Chinese mainland by opening an office in Shanghai.

The Hong Kong-based BEA will also expand to other cities including Beijing and Shenzhen to tap their base of affluent clients and ride on the bank's network in those cities.

To enjoy such personalized services, an individual needs to have at least US$1 million in net assets, a common industry standard.

Overseas players like HSBC, Standard Chartered Bank and Citi and domestic banks like Bank of China and China Merchants Bank have already entered the market to offer their personalized private services to the growing number of millionaires on the mainland.

There were 345,000 millionaires on the mainland in 2006, up from 320,000 in 2005, said Capgemini SA and Merrill Lynch & Co.