Citic Securities Co, China's biggest brokerage by market value, said it scrapped a plan to buy an office building in Beijing for as much as 1 billion yuan (US$146 million) after the developer failed to get required sales licenses.

The developer will return 492 million yuan that CITIC Securities has paid by March 31, the brokerage said in a statement to the Shanghai Stock Exchange Wednesday.

(Shanghai Daily January 15, 2009)