This study investigates into the impact of local regulatory ownership restrictions on the market entry strategies of the Bank of America, Deutsche Bank, ING and the Royal Bank of Scotland into China in 2005. The research reveals that these banks entering the Chinese retail banking market applied hybrid market entry strategies in order to overcome regulatory restrictions and to exploit the market opportunities to be largest extent possible. Hybrid market entry strategies entail features of more than one single market entry mode. Hence, it is shown that the market entry modes promoted by the conventional market entry literature are by no means mutually exclusive.