TEMASEK Holdings Pte, Singapore's state-owned investment company, has boosted its stake in the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China for the third time in a year as Goldman Sachs Group exited its seven-year-old investment.

Temasek bought 280 million shares in the world's largest bank by market value at an average price of HK$5.50 a share, or a total of HK$1.54 billion (US$198 million), according to a Hong Kong stock exchange statement. Goldman Sachs raised US$1.1 billion by selling 1.58 billion shares in ICBC on Tuesday.

The purchase underscores Temasek's interest in China's largest state-controlled banks, leading it to accumulate US$21 billion of holdings in Beijing-based ICBC, China Construction Bank and the Bank of China over the past two years. Global firms including Goldman Sachs and Bank of America Corp have divested holdings as new capital rules known as Basel III make it more expensive to hold minority stakes in banks.

"Temasek has a different strategy and timetable for the investments, and it will probably hold these stakes for longer," said Wilson Li, a Shenzhen-based analyst at Guotai Junan Securities. "Temasek is different from Goldman Sachs and other investors because it is not subject to the capital requirement which basically forced all those global banks to get rid of non-core businesses."

Temasek bought 3.55 billion ICBC shares at HK$5.05 apiece from Goldman Sachs in April last year and then disclosed the purchase of a further 83.7 million shares in the Chinese lender the following month. This week's purchase boosted its total holding to 7.04 percent of ICBC's Hong Kong-listed shares from 6.71 percent, according to the filing.

Global financial firms including Temasek have invested US$33 billion in Chinese lenders from 2001 to 2009, regulatory data showed. They still own at least US$45 billion of stakes in the local banks, according to Bloomberg News data.

Jeffrey Fang, a spokesman for Temasek in Singapore, confirmed the latest investment.