At Chinese Banks, Change Is Slow
BEIJING -- At a small branch of China Construction Bank Corp. in an office tower here, Huang Wenping flits between customers, answering questions and occasionally directing them to a rack of colorful brochures promoting credit cards, mutual funds and other products.
Ms. Huang, 47 years old, took the new position as a customer-service manager about a year ago, around the time the bank raised $9.2 billion in the first initial public offering of China's biggest state-owned banks.
Beyond that, there haven't been many improvements at the Pan Jia Po branch, say customers who passed through on a recent afternoon. "Not much has changed," says Shu Ka, a 24-year-old marketing executive who uses the bank to pay her cellphone bill.
Investors are paying more attention to China's big banks amid the euphoria over the massive initial public offering of Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd., which began trading Friday on the Hong Kong and Shanghai stock markets. The sale of the shares earlier this month raised as much as $21.9 billion, making it the world's biggest IPO. The deal's bankers say overall demand was about 20 times the number of shares, underscoring investors' infatuation with China's big banks. The shares jumped 17% as trading opened in Hong Kong after rising 9% in their Shanghai debut, as individual and institutional investors jockeyed for a piece of China's biggest bank.
But all the excitement about ICBC and China's three other large banks belies the uneven pace of change at the banks.
China's expensive overhaul of its banking system began a decade ago, when the banks were little more than an arm of the ruling Communist Party. Since 1998, the government has spent $400 billion through capital injections and bad-loan removals to improve and modernize the four biggest banks, according to Fitch Ratings. The banks are beginning to prepare for increased competition later this year, when Beijing begins allowing foreign competitors greater access to China's banking market, in which individual deposits total $1.9 trillion.
Selling shares to international investors is a crucial element of this transformation, as the government hopes to increase transparency, improve business discipline and expand the investor base. In the past 14 months, three of China's biggest banks, including China Construction Bank and ICBC, have sold more than $50 billion of stock.
Just last year, ICBC had a government capital injection of $15 billion and $85 billion of loans taken off its books, Fitch Ratings says.
Recapitalized and relieved of most of their bad loans, the banks now have to prove that they will make good on their promises to revamp credit-assessment systems, increase fee income, create a performance-driven culture and, most important, not repeat misdeeds of the past.
The investment theory goes something like this: China's economy is expanding at an annual rate of 10%. The biggest banks operate sprawling nationwide branch networks that number as high as 18,000 and provide investors the best access to that economic growth. As long as the economy continues expanding, companies are less likely to default on their loans and will need capital to grow. If the economy were to show signs of slowing, investors would be inclined to sell the stocks.
That theory is supported by the stock performance of the banks that have already listed. China Construction Bank is up 55% from its listing a year ago, and Bank of China Ltd. has gained 15%.
"Most of the fund managers are in it more on a tactical basis until we see some kind of economic-cycle top," says Bratin Sanyal, head of Asian equities at ING Investment Management, which holds the stocks.
Along with cautiously watching for an economic slowdown, investors also want to know if the banks are modernizing ahead of looming international competition. On that score, China Construction Bank's performance is mixed since it began selling shares.
In the first half of the year, the bank nearly achieved its loan-growth target for the year, expanding its loans by 14.5%. Analysts now expect new lending to increase by 20% this year. The bank attributes the growth to this year's commencement of the government's latest five-year economic-growth program, which caused a surge in the start of new large-scale projects.
"They started lending like crazy," says Charlene Chu, a banking analyst at Fitch Ratings, referring to China Construction Bank. "That is very volatile growth. The overall management is still developing. It is not a developed bank."
Now, the government has moved to curb bank lending in an effort to slow the investment boom, lest it turn into a precarious bubble. This year China's central bank has raised lending rates twice, by a total of just more than half a percentage point, and taken other measures to pull money out of the banking system. The government recently said the controls on bank lending will be maintained in the fourth quarter.
The percentage of bad loans in China Construction Bank's portfolio was at 3.5% as of June. And about 10% of the bank's $356 billion of loans are categorized as one step away from being bad. This "special mention" category is considered the most vulnerable in the case of a downturn.
China Construction Bank declined to comment.
Some changes may not be visible at the branch level. The bank appointed a chief financial officer and a chief risk officer and made other management changes that it said were aimed at establishing "vertical management over different business segments."
"A lot of things are going on across a broad base," said Kenneth D. Lewis, chief executive of Bank of America Corp., which last year paid $3 billion for a 9% stake in China Construction Bank, which has since tripled in value. "It will continue across many years, and we weren't expecting some watershed moment when things change dramatically."
中国银行业变革：千呼万唤始出来
在中国建设银行(China Construction Bank Corp.)位于北京某写字楼的一家储蓄所内，黄文平（音）不断在客户中穿梭，回答各种问题，偶尔还指引客户去看推销信用卡、共同基金以及其他产品的彩色宣传材料。
黄文平大约在一年前开始担任客户服务经理这个新职务，差不多就在同一时间建设银行通过首次公开募股(IPO)筹集了92亿美元，成为中国四大国有银行中首个进行IPO的银行。
这天下午来来往往的客户都表示，除此之外，建设银行潘家坡储蓄所并没有太多的改变。现年24岁的市场营销员舒卡（音）说：“没有太多变化。”她来这里交手机费。
中国工商银行股份有限公司(Industrial & Commercial Bank Of China Ltd., 简称：工商银行)大规模IPO受到市场的狂热追捧，中国各大银行也因此越来越被人们所关注。工商银行将于周五开始在香港及上海股票市场进行交易。在过去一周中，工商银行IPO共筹资219亿美元，成为全球规模最大的IPO。参与此次IPO的银行家表示，工商银行股票的总体认购率达到了20倍左右，这体现了投资者对中国大银行的青睐。
但是，市场对工商银行及中国其他三大银行的狂热掩盖了这些银行与此不相称的改革步伐。
中国对银行系统的全面改革开始于10年前，那时银行更多充当中国共产 的执政工具。据惠誉国际评级(Fitch Ratings)称，自1998年以后，中国政府花费4,000亿美元向四大银行注资并为其消除坏帐，以改善它们的经营状况，进一步迈向现代化。今年底，北京将允许外资银行更大规模进入中国银行市场，中国的银行开始为日益激烈的竞争作准备。目前，中国个人存款总额高达1.9万亿美元。
向国际投资者出售股份是银行改革的一个关键组成部分，政府希望藉此提高银行业务透明度、完善运营秩序并扩大投资者群体。在过去的14个月中，四大银行中包括建设银行及工商银行在内的三家共发行了总额超过500亿美元的股票。
惠誉国际评级称，工商银行仅去年就获得政府注资150亿美元，并消除了帐面上850亿美元的坏帐。
在重新调整资本结构、并消除了大部分坏帐之后，这些银行现在应该履行之前的承诺：重整信用评估系统，提高费用收入，创造一种以业绩为导向的企业文化，而且最重要的是不要重蹈覆辙。
人们投资中国银行业自有他们的道理。中国经济每年正在以10%的速度增长，四大银行的营业网点遍布全国各地，分支机构的数量高达18,000家，这为投资者提供从飞速发展的经济中获得一杯羹的最佳途径。只要中国经济延续增长势头，企业方面拖欠贷款的可能性就会降低，而且它们对资金还会有持续的需求。但是如果经济出现放缓的迹象，投资者可能会选择出售手中的银行股票。
已上市的几家银行股票的表现验证了这一点。建设银行自一年前上市以来，股价飙升了55%，中国银行股份有限公司(Bank Of China Ltd., 简称：中国银行)在上市后也上升了15%。预计工商银行股票也将有上佳表现。
“这就像是看着后视镜开车，”ING资产管理(ING Investment Management)亚洲证券负责人布拉廷?桑亚尔(Bratin Sanyal)。“在看到经济达到发展周期的顶峰之前，大多数基金经理人都是抱着随 应变的态度。因此我认为，当经济发展周期出现转折时，我们不会继续持有此类股票了。”ING资产管理持有这几家银行的股票。
除了密切关注经济发展放缓的迹象之外，投资者们还想了解银行在国际竞争到来之前其改革是否有新进展。从这点来看，建设银行自发行股票以来的表现令人喜忧参半。
今年上半年，建设银行几乎完成了其全年的贷款增长目标，贷款增幅高达14.5%。分析人士现在预计该行今年新增贷款将增加20%。建设银行将贷款增长的原因归结为今年是中国新五年计划的头一年，新的大规模项目的数量因此出现飙升。该行五分之二以上的新增贷款投向了基础设施有关项目。
“他们疯狂地对外发放贷款，”惠誉国际评级的银行分析师Charlene Chu在谈到建设银行时说。“这是特别不稳定的增长。银行的整个管理系统仍在不断发展中。它并不是一家发展成熟的银行。”
目前中国政府正在采取措施控制银行发放贷款的规模，为投资增长降温，防止投资过火出现泡沫。中国央行今年已两次提高贷款利率，总的上调幅度超过了0.5个百分点，央行还采取其他措施从银行系统中抽取资金。政府最近表示第四季度将继续对银行贷款进行控制。
尽管建设银行的坏帐比例在6月份下降至3.5%，但是其坏帐总量上升了4.5%。另外，该行3,560亿美元的贷款中约有10%被归为离坏帐一步之遥的种类。这类“需要关注贷款”被看作是经济增长放缓时最危险的一类贷款。
建设银行拒绝就此发表评论。
一些变化或许在支行层面上体现不出来。该行任命了一名首席财务长以及一名负责风险管理的高层管理人员，并进行了其他管理层改革。据建设银行称这一系列改革的目的是建立跨越不同业务类别的“纵向管理”。
“建设银行上下都在发生着很多的变化，”美国银行(Bank of America Corp.)首席执行长肯尼斯?刘易斯(Kenneth D. Lewis)说。“这种情况还将持续很多年。从一开始我们就认为，即使事物发生了巨大的转变，其中也不会出现什么分水岭似的时刻。”美国银行去年斥资30亿美元购买了建设银行9%的股份，现在其市值已经增长了两倍。
建设银行的其他改革包括技术及电脑系统升级，更加集中的管理和信用结构、以及人力资源重组等。建设银行8月出资12.5亿美元购买了美国银行香港零售银行业务，实现了重要的海外扩张。
在潘家坡储蓄所，客户服务经理黄文平还指出，储蓄所大厅内增加了12把带靠垫的椅子供客户等待时使用。
Kate Linebaugh
