June 2001
Bad debts just get bigger
The best guess as to the eventual size of Chinese banks’ bad debts is that they will be many times larger than initial official estimates. In a desperate effort to clean up their balance sheets, banks have shifted bad debts to asset management companies. But there’s no sign that these can offload them to new money investors or engineer decent recovery rates. And there’s plenty more to come. Ministers may feel a little queasy when they get the final bill.
There have been a few rumblings coming from the Chinese
mainland and its banks as they attempt to tick off the tasks on
their things-to-do list. On the positive side, Bank of China has
been awarding valuable mandates to privatize its Hong Kong
operation.
Goldman Sachs and UBS Warburg seem satisfied with life, but still
haven't officially raised the banners and popped the champagne in
public to celebrate landing such an important prize. November
however is being touted as a very good month for launching such an
IPO.
On the less than positive side, the issue of non-performing loans
still casts a shadow over the whole restructuring process. "What we
have learned in the last few months is that the hole is a lot
bigger than we first feared," says Nicholas Lardy, a senior fellow
at Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank. Another
banker based in New York, who sounds perversely upbeat,...
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