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Bad Debt Soars 35% In China As Government Set To Fabricate Dismal Loan Data
Bad Debt Soars 35% In China As Government Set To Fabricate Dismal Loan Data
Back in March, we noted that decelerating economic growth and bad debt are taking a toll on profitability at China’s largest banks, leading them to slash payouts to shareholders.
“Particularly hard hit is ABC, which saw its non-performing loans jump 25bps Q/Q,” we observed, adding that “NPLs for loans made to manufacturers more than doubled that number, rising 54bps sequentially.” That figure underscores the degree to which China’s transition from an investment-led, smokestack economy to a model driven by consumption and services is weighing heavily on industry and in turn, on banks that lend to the manufacturing sector.
Although NPLs have been rising for some time in China, determining the true extent of the problem is largely impossible due to Beijing’s “management” of bad loans. As we outlined in “How China’s Banks Hide Trillions In Credit Risk,” there’s no way to know how pervasive Beijing’s practice of forcing banks to roll-over problem loans truly is, meaning that even if we ignore the fact that quite a bit of credit risk is obscured by the practice of shifting it around, moving it off balance sheet, and reclassifying it, (i.e. if we just look at traditional loans) it’s still difficult to know what percentage of loans are actually impaired because it’s entirely possible that a non-trivial percentage of sour debt is forcibly restructured and thus never makes it into the official NPL figures.
Indeed, the fact that NPLs are remarkably similar across banks suggests the numbers are, much like China’s GDP data, “smoothed out.” That said, a look at “special mention” loans and overdue loans can help to paint a more accurate picture although the figures still look grossly understated.
Source: Fitch
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On The Looming Wall Of Chinese Defaults, Restructuring Firm Warns “You Know It’s Coming” | Zero Hedge
The news this week of China’s largest corporate bankruptcy – Haixin Iron & Steel Group – amid crashing iron ore and steel prices was followed by analysts noting it “will be followed by others,” as the major flaw of producers of iron ore, the most traded commodity after oil, is they tend to be “over-bullish.” Distressed debt funds are starting to circle in preparation for what they expect to be a bloodbath as Bloomberg reports, bad debts in China are well underestimated because authorities persist in propping up weak companies and bailing out local investors, according to DAC Management, “we’ve yet to see it because if you look at corporate defaults, they keep getting covered by the government. At some point, they can’t cover every single one.” Most worryingly though, as KPMG points out, “when you see restructuring advisers getting hired by SOEs… you know it’s coming.”
“Instead of reorganization efforts conducted by local governments, this is an inevitable trend that China will take more ailing steel mills to the courts to protect creditors,” Xu said by phone from Beijing.
But apart from the entire Steel industry being on the verge of bankruptcy… China is doing great!
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