冷看中国银行股“大热卖”

Scepticism is needed in China's banking frenzy

The initial public offering of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China is poised to become the largest in history. The investor enthusiasm is puzzling because, in spite of the IPO, the Chinese government will still be ICBC's majority owner.

Many investors discount government control because the government has financed the removal of losses resulting from past lending policies, encouraged ICBC and the other large banks to accept foreign investors and facilitated the sale of small amounts of the banks' equity to the public. These moves all indicate a sophisticated awareness of the incentive structures required in modern efficient banks.


ADVERTISEMENT
Yet the lesson from international experience is that public-sector banks perform poorly by the usual market metrics: returns on equity are low, expenses high and they are dogged by non-performing loans. The reason to expect the same in China is that social stability is an overriding policy objective. More than 700m people reside in rural areas where incomes are one-third of those in urban areas. Social stability depends on financing enough jobs to absorb new entrants, lay-offs and migrants. There is abundant evidence that the government still relies on the major banks for this funding.

One indicator is China's unsustainable investment growth rate. The banks' role in this is critical. Their mainstay borrowers are companies, most of which are still directly or indirectly government-controlled. As the large banks' own published financial statements show, corporate customers still account for between 70 and 80 per cent of their loans. In 2005, roughly 40 per cent of the industrial state-owned enterprises (SOEs) were losing money and current data indicate their losses continue to mount. The largest SOEs are reporting burgeoning profits and, no doubt, financing new investments themselves, but they are the exceptions: in 2005, the 10 largest accounted for more than 53 per cent of total SOE revenues and the 165 SOEs owned by the central government for more than 70 per cent of profits. The implication is that banks' exposures are likely to be greater to the thousands of smaller government-dominated firms whose profits appear to be much less certain.

Richard Podpiera, an International Monetary Fund researcher, found that the large state-owned banks were losing market share to other financial institutions more quickly in those provinces that contained the most profitable customers. Instead, the banks seem to be lending wherever the SOEs need money. For instance, in 2003 and 2004, across provinces, there is a near perfect correlation between the share of bank loans to SOEs and government shares of industrial production. Data on loan pricing patterns at the banks since 2004 show that the interest rates charged to borrowers are compressed around the benchmark rate and show little pricing for risk. Such tendencies suggest these banks will be inefficient low-margin, low-growth businesses that will lose out to smaller banks that are better able to modernise themselves without attracting political opposition.

As their uncommercial lending continues, we expect the largest banks to need another bail-out. By most calculations, a bail-out would be affordable. If those loans publicly reported by the big three as at risk of becoming non-performing turn bad in 2007, there will be an estimated Rmb1,500bn of new bad loans from lending during the current boom; amounting to about 7.2 per cent of 2007 gross domestic product.

While affordable, another bail-out will divert public funds from other priorities such as enhancing public services in rural areas and accelerating ur-banisation. To reduce the probabilities of further calls on the public purse, the largest banks could be structured differently. One option would be to or-ganise them into a "good bank" and "bad bank" structure that separates new assets and customers from bad assets and customers: the good bank has clear incentives to grow and the bad bank to wind down lending.

Another alternative is the "narrow bank" model, which confines the banks to investing depositors' assets in low-risk government securities. Unless the government's goal of efficient banks is better reconciled with its political goal of social stability, the prospects for these newly listed companies are limited.

Wendy Dobson is professor of business economics at the University of Toronto. Anil Kashyap is professor of economics and finance at the University of Chicago. This article is based on The Contradiction in China's Gradualist Ganking Reforms, to be published in the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity and available on the authors' websites
冷看中国银行股“大热卖”


中
国工商银行(ICBC)的首次公开发行(IPO)有望成为史上规模最大的首发。投资者表现出的狂热令人不解，因为尽管该行进行了首发，但中国政府将仍是它的多数股股东。

许多投资者对中国政府的控股权漠然置之，原因在于，中国政府出资剥离了由过去贷款政策产生的坏账损失，鼓励中国工商银行和其它大型国有银行引进外国投资者，并为该行向公众出售少数股权提供了便利。这些行动都说明，中国政府对现代高效银行所需的激励结构有着精深了解。

但从国际经验来看，以通常的市场标准衡量，国有银行的绩效颇为糟糕：净资产收益率低、费用高，而且一直受到不良贷款的困扰。预计中国的情况也是如此，原因是社会稳定的政策目标高于一切。中国拥有逾7亿农村人口，他们的收入只有城市人口收入的三分之一。社会稳定取决于为足够的就业机会提供资金支持，以吸收新增就业人口、下岗工人和流动民工。大量证据表明，中国政府目前仍依赖几家大型国有银行提供此类资金。


反映这种局面的一项指标是中国无法持续下去的投资增长率。银行在其中的作用至关重要。银行的支柱贷款客户是企业，其中多数仍直接或间接由政府控制。正如中国工商银行自己公布的会计报表所显示，企业客户贷款仍占其贷款总量的70%至80%。2005年，约40%的工业国有企业(SOEs)处于亏损状态，而当前数据显示，它们的亏损额还在继续增加。中国大型国企的利润正在迅速增加，它们无疑在自己为新增投资提供资金，但它们只是个例：2005年，10家最大国有企业的营业占全部国有企业营收的逾53%，165家中央直属企业的利润占全部国有企业利润的逾70%。这暗示着，成千上万家规模较小的国有企业给银行带来的风险更大，这些企业的利润似乎不确定得多。

国际货币基金组织(IMF)研究员理查德?波德别拉(Richard Podpiera)发现，在盈利能力最强客户所在的中国省份，其它金融机构正以更快的速度抢占大型国有银行的市场份额。相反，大型国有银行似乎正在国有企业需要钱的任何地方发放贷款。例如，2003年和2004年，在中国所有省份中，国有企业获得的贷款比例与政府工业产值的比例之间，保持着近乎完美的正相关。2004年以来，关于贷款定价模型的数据显示，向借款者收取的贷款利率全部被压缩在基准利率周围，定价几乎未反映风险水平。这种趋势表明，这些银行是低效率、低利润和低增长的企业，面对那些更善于在不招致政治反对情况下实现自身现代化的中小银行，大型国有银行将败下阵来。

随着大型国有银行的非商业贷款继续增长，预计它们将需要政府进行再次注资。大多数计算显示，中国政府能够承受注资成本。三家大型国有银行已公布了有成为不良贷款风险的贷款，如果2007年这些贷款的状况恶化，那么在当前信贷热潮中预计将产生1.5万亿人民币的新增坏账，相当于2007年国内生产总值的7.2%左右。

尽管中国政府能够承受这些坏账，但再次注资将把公共资金从其它当务之急（例如提升农村地区的公共服务和加快城市化进程）中转移出来。为了降低再次向公共财政伸手要钱的可能，大型国有银行可以用多种不同的方式重组。一种选择是将它们重组为“绩优银行”(good bank)和“绩差银行”(bad bank)，将新资产及其客户与不良资产及其客户分离：绩优银行有实现增长的明显动机，绩差银行会减少贷款。

另一种选择是“狭义银行”(narrow bank)模式。在这种模式下，银行只能将储户的资产投资于低风险的政府债券。如果中国政府的高效银行目标不能更好地与其社会稳定的政治目标相协调，那么这些新上市银行的前景就颇为有限。

温迪?多布森是多伦多大学(University of Toronto)商业经济学教授。阿尼尔?卡什亚普是芝加哥大学(University of Chicago)经济学及金融学教授。本文以两位作者的论文――《中国渐进式银行改革中的矛盾》(The Contradiction in China’s Gradualist Banking Reforms)为基础，该论文将在《布鲁金斯经济活动论文集》(Brookings Papers on Economic Activity)上发表，读者可从作者网站上获取。

中国工商银行IPO规模创全球之最

ICBC Completes World's Biggest IPO

BEIJING -- China's biggest bank completed the world's biggest initial share sale late last night, raising as much as $21.9 billion.

At a meeting in San Francisco, Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd. and its advisers set the initial public offering price at the top end of an indicative range, at HK$3.07 (39 U.S. cents) a share, according to a person familiar with the matter. That means ICBC, as the bank is known, raised at least $19.07 billion in the sale, besting Japan's NTT Mobile Communications Network Inc., whose $18.4 billion IPO in 1998 had been the biggest. The ICBC deal could still increase by 15% to $21.9 billion if an overallotment option is exercised.

Having generated more than $300 billion of demand from global institutional investors, the deal highlights China's growing importance on international capital markets. For the past decade, the country's big state-owned companies have turned to global markets to become more market-oriented, to improve transparency and disclosure, and to fortify their capital bases. In the past two years, as the nation's top lenders have begun going public, China's role in global markets has grown even more.

Last year, Chinese companies raised $25.9 billion from international markets, more than twice the previous year, according to Thomson Financial. Stock sales by Chinese companies will double again this year thanks to ICBC, the nation's biggest bank by assets.

Share sales by Chinese companies are also accounting for a greater share of global-equity sales -- 5.2% last year, by value, compared with 2.8% five years before, according to Thomson. This year, Chinese companies are on track to account for about 10% of the global total.

It is the country's biggest banks that have made that happen. ICBC and China's second- and third-largest banks have raised more than $40 billion in the past 12 months. Despite a history of bad loans, fraud and poor disclosure, China's banks are seen by global investors as the best way to gain exposure to the world's fastest-growing major economy. In the third quarter, China's gross domestic product expanded by an annual rate of 10.4%. State lenders also have broad exposure to the country's powerful exporters, which sold more than $690 billion of goods in the first nine months of the year.

In the past year, sentiment toward China's lenders has made a 180-degree shift. The view that they are inefficient lenders with poor ability to evaluate risk has been overtaken by a sense of their potential. "There is a lot of euphoria about the banks," says Jonathan Anderson, an economist at UBS AG. "Right now, investors see Chinese banks as high margin and high growth."

Merrill Lynch & Co., Credit Suisse Group, Deutsche Bank AG, China International Capital Corp. and ICBC's investment-banking unit are managing the global offering.
中国工商银行IPO规模创全球之最

中国最大的银行中国工商银行(Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd.)已于北京时间昨日深夜完成了全球规模最大的首次公开募股(IPO)，筹资总额达219亿美元。

据一位消息人士透露，在于旧金山举行的会议上，中国工商银行及其发行顾问将该行IPO价格确定在每股3.07港元（合39美分），位于发行指导价格区间的高端。这意味着工商银行此次IPO募集资金至少将达到190.7亿美元，超过了日本NTT移动通讯(NTT Mobile Communication Network Inc.) 1998年时184亿美元的上市筹资规模，成为世界迄今为止规模最大的IPO。如果行使增售选择权，中国工商银行的股票发行规模还将提升15%，筹资总额达到219亿美元。

工商银行的IPO吸引了全球机构投资者逾3,000亿美元的认购资金，彰显出中国在国际资本市场上日益提高的重要地位。在过去10年中，为增强透明度和信息披露，充实资本基础，并使经营更加市场化，中国大型国有公司已开始前往国际资本市场筹集资金。而在过去两年中，随着中国大型银行纷纷上市，中国在全球市场所起到作用已愈加突出。

Thomson Financial的资料显示，去年，中国公司在国际市场的筹资额为259亿美元，较前年增长逾一倍。而受以资产规模衡量位列中国银行业之首的中国工商银行此次IPO的推动，中国公司今年在国际市场的股票发行规模还将比去年再增加一倍。

Thomson的资料显示，中国公司的股票筹资额在全球股票发行额中的比例也有所上升，去年的这一比例为5.2%，5年前仅为2.8%。而今年，中国公司的股票筹资规模将占到全球的10%左右。

导致筹资比例出现上述变化的主要是中国最大几家银行的股票发行。在过去12个月中，中国工商银行和中国第二和第三大银行筹集的资金超过了400亿美元。尽管存在坏帐、欺诈和信息披露不健全等历史问题，但全球投资者仍将中国的银行视为分享该国作为全球增长最快经济体所带来利益的最佳途径。今年第三季度中国国内生产总值(GDP)折合成年率的增幅为10.4%。中国的国有银行还与该国阵容强大的出口商有着广泛的业务联系，这些出口商今年前9个月的出口总值超过了6,900亿美元。

过去1年中，市场对中国各银行的态度发生了180度转变。人们以往对这些银行效率低下、风险评估能力不足的看法已经被它们具有潜力的认识所取代。瑞士银行(UBS AG)的经济学家Jonathan Anderson表示，人们对中国这些银行有很多美好的期望。他说，在投资者眼中，中国的银行俨然是些高利润率、高增长率的企业。

美林公司(Merrill Lynch & Co.)、中国国际金融有限公司(China International Capital Corp.)、工商东亚融资有限公司(ICEA Capital Ltd.)担任此次IPO的全球协调人。美林、瑞士信贷集团(Credit Suisse Group)、德意志银行(Deutsche Bank AG)、中国国际金融有限公司和工商东亚融资有限公司为本次香港IPO的联席簿记行。