For
those who have grown bored with the ongoing US-China trade war whose
escalation was obvious to all but the dumbest BTFD algos, the biggest
news of the past week was that yet another Chinese bank was bailed out by the Chinese
government - the third in the past three months - and a substantial one
at that: with over 1.4 trillion yuan in assets ($200BN), Hang Feng
Bank's nationalization was certainly large enough to make a dent on the
Chinese financial system and on the Chinese Sovereign Wealth Fund, which
drew the short straw and was told to bailout the troubled Chinese bank (more here).
Hang Feng's bailout followed those of Baoshang and Bank of Jinzhou, which means that 3 of the top 4 most troubled banks have now been either nationalized by an SOE or seized by the government, which is effectively the same thing.
Hang Feng救済はBaoshang とBank of Jinzhouに続くものであり、4大問題銀行の内3行がすでに国有化され、国有企業化政府に吸収された、どれも似たようなものだ。
Of course, to regular readers this development was hardly surprising,
especially after our post in mid-July when we saw the $40 trillion
Chinese banking system approach its closest encounter with the
proverbial "Lehman moment" yet, when inexplicably the four-day repo rate
on China’s government bonds (i.e., the cost for investors to pledge
their Chinese government bond holdings for short-term funding) on the
Shanghai exchange briefly spiked to 1,000% in afternoon trading.
While some attributed the surge to a fat finger, far more ominous
signs were already present, and in the aftermath of the Baoshang
failure, which has sent Chinese banking stocks tumbling, one-day and
seven-day weighted average borrowing rates had remained low thanks to
huge central bank cash injections - such as the 250BN yuan we described back in May - longer tenors such as the 1 month repo have marched sharply higher.
And now, none other than Goldman points out that something is clearly
breaking inside China's banking system as one after another small bank
domino falls, and as following the Baoshang Bank takeover in late May,
interbank lenders have become more cautious towards the credit risk of
smaller and weaker financial institutions.
今や他でも無いゴールドマンがこう指摘する、中国銀行システム内部で明らかに何かが壊れている、小型銀行が次々と倒産するドミノが起きている、5月遅くにBaoshang Bank を接収した後、銀行間貸し手は更に注意深くなり、弱小金融機関の与信リスクを懸念している。
The result: a Chinese banking system in which banks have lost trust
in one another, manifested itself in much tighter liquidity in the
interbank market, with the highest intraday 7-day repo rates
staying above 8% over the past month as questions swirl over the
viability of the underlying collateral. In fact, as shown in
the chart below, the creeping funding freeze among Chinese banks is now
even worse compared to the historic episode in the summer of 2013 when
following an aggressive ramp up in Beijing's deleveraging campaign, repo
rates exploded to the point that banks effectively stopped interacting
with each other.
As Goldman observes, "the sustained spikes in intraday repo rates
suggest that some banks are still under pressure and are having to pay
higher costs to obtain funding in the interbank market. A number of
action has been taken to ease concerns regarding credit risk at smaller
banks, including the recent equity injection into Bank of Jinzhou by
ICBC Financial Asset Investment Company and China Cinda Asset
Management."
ゴールドマンの見立てでは、「日中のレポレートスパイクが常態化し、これはいくつかの銀行がまだ圧力下にあり、高い金利を負担してもインターバンク市場で資金調達せざるを得ない状況にあることを示している。小型銀行の与信リスク懸念を緩和するいくつかの措置が取られている、たとえば最近のICBC Financial Asset InvestmentCompanyとChina Cinda Asset ManagementからBank of Jinzhouへの資本注入だ。」
Nonetheless, as the bank concludes, "it will take more time before
market conditions will normalize." Meanwhile, if more banks from the
list above, or worse, larger banks, end up failing - and so far there is
every indication that the process is only getting worse - the Chinese
funding freeze could get so large that the most dreaded event finally
take place: a bank run among one of China's largest, state-owned banks,
which as a reminder, are also the largest in the world.
One final, if key, point: it's not just Chinese banks that are in
funding peril, Chinese corporations are are on the firing line, and as
Goldman points out in the same report, the pace of China onshore bond
defaults is showing no signs of slowing down. According to the bank's
estimates there were five new defaults in July, bringing the total
number of new defaults this year to 23 (Exhibit 1), compared with 38 new
defaults that occurred in 2018. These 23 issuers had RMB 90.5bn of
onshore bonds outstanding at the time of default, equating to 0.5% of all onshore corporate bonds outstanding at the start of 2019. However,
all the defaults so far this year are from privately owned enterprises
(POEs), and the RMB 90.5bn of onshore bonds outstanding at the time of
default equates to 3.5% of all POE bonds outstanding at the start of
this year. To us, the elevated level of defaults continue to impact
weaker credit, as the net issuance of bonds rated AA or lower turned
negative in July.
For those curious, below is a comprehensive, if not complete, list of
Chinese corporations that have defaulted since 2014, when China first
started permitting corporations to fail (smaller companies have been
omitted).
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