China's AgBank denies report of BMO investment

BEIJING Oct 29 (Reuters) - Agricultural Bank of China [ABC.UL] denied on Thursday that it had agreed to bring Canada's Bank of Montreal (BMO.TO) on board as a strategic investor.

AgBank, China's only big state-owned lender that has yet to float any shares, is being reformed along commercial lines in preparation for an eventual stock market listing.

Other Chinese banks brought in foreign banks as strategic investors before their initial public offerings, but AgBank has yet to declare whether it will do the same.

The Economic Information Daily, a paper run by the official Xinhua news agency, reported on Tuesday that AgBank Chairman Xiang Junbo had signed a deal with Bank of Montreal, which could lead to Canada's No. 4 bank taking an equity stake in AgBank.

"AgBank has not picked any international financial institution as a strategic investor," the bank said in a statement on its website. It told journalists that this statement was expressly meant to deny the reported deal with Bank of Montreal. (Reporting by Zhou Xin and Simon Rabinovitch; Editing by Alan Wheatley and Jonathan Hopfner)