China’s $1.7 trillion hangover

China’s $1.7 trillion hangover

Up to 40% of China’s $1.7 trillion LGFV loans are at high risk of default. What’s a panicking Beijing to do?

EuromoneyFXNews.com

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June 2006

Saudi Arabia: Sacking of CMA chief fails to revive Saudi market

Hiring and firing securities markets regulators on the basis of stock index performance is not a particularly credible policy. But that’s what the Saudi authorities did last month, sacking the chairman of the Capital Markets Authority, Jammaz Al-Suhaimi, a modernizer and reformer unfairly demonized on stock speculators’ bulletin boards across the kingdom as somehow being responsible for the crash of an overvalued market.


Jammaz Al-Suhaimi: unceremoniously replaced

The lessons of Jammaz Al-Suhaimi's demise


Al-Suhaimi had struggled to dampen down ill-informed retail buying of speculative stocks at unjustifiably high valuations when the Tadawul All Share Index rose uncontrollably to 20,643.6 this February. When the inevitable market correction turned into a rout in March, he tendered his resignation. This was rejected. Al-Suhaimi was told he was doing good work for the benefit of his country and should carry on.

Seven weeks later he was out: replaced, unceremoniously, by Abdul Rahman bin Abdul Aziz Al-Tuwaijeri, secretary general of the supreme economic council. “It was a total shock,” says a former colleague of Al-Suhaimi, “completely unexpected.”

What had changed?

Simply a scapegoat?

There are two schools of thought. One holds that the authorities simply needed a scapegoat for the failure of measures brought forward in March and April by the supreme economic...


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