Chinese regulators have closed a regulatory loophole that last year allowed heavily indebted local government financing vehicles (LGFVs) to further increase their borrowing, four sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. LGFVs, set up by Chinese local governments to fund infrastructure investment, have been told to stop issuing offshore bonds with a 364-day duration, the sources said.
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A top executive at China Evergrande's electric-vehicle business has been detained as part of a criminal investigation, adding to Evergrande’s mounting problems, the Wall Street Journal reported. China Evergrande New Energy Vehicle said on Monday that Liu Yongzhuo, an executive director and the president of its automobile business, was being held by authorities “on suspicion of illegal crimes.” It didn’t provide details or say when he was detained. Liu attended a company event in the northern Chinese port city of Tianjin on Dec.
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Chinese wealth manager Zhongzhi Enterprise Group has filed for bankruptcy liquidation after failing to repay debt, as the firm grapples with a deepening property market downturn, Reuters reported. Zhongzhi applied for bankruptcy on the grounds it could not pay its due debts and its assets were insufficient to pay all its debts, a court in China's capital Beijing said in a statement on Friday. The court said it accepted Zhongzhi's bankruptcy liquidation application in accordance with China's enterprise bankruptcy law.
China's State Council issued guidelines on improving an operating budget system for state-owned capital, according to a statement on the government website on Saturday, Reuters reported. The government will expand coverage of the budget system and optimise a mechanism for state-owned companies to hand over their profits, among a series of measures seeking to improve the capital efficiency and support growth of state-owned assets, it said.
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China's local government financing vehicles (LGFVs) are repaying their bonds early at the fastest pace since 2018, taking advantage of a Beijing-backed debt swap programme aimed at slashing localities' borrowing costs, Reuters reported. The redemptions have jumped since October, when Beijing allowed local governments to issue special refinancing bonds, estimated to be worth over 1 trillion yuan ($139.85 billion), which could replace their higher-yielding LGFV debt.
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Some of China's top banks have sharpened scrutiny of smaller peers' asset quality and have tightened standards for interbank lending, three sources said, in an effort to curb credit risk as a deepening property debt crisis ripples through the economy, Reuters reported. Two of China's biggest state-owned banks and a leading joint-stock bank have stepped up reviews of smaller lenders over the past couple of months to identify those with poor asset quality and have a high risk of default, the sources said.
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India’s economy is booming. Stock prices are through the roof, among the best performing in the world. The government’s investment in airports, bridges and roads, and clean-energy infrastructure is visible almost everywhere. India’s total output, or gross domestic product, is expected to increase 6 percent this year — faster than the United States or China. But there’s a hitch: Investment by Indian companies is not keeping pace, the New York Times reported. The money that companies put into the future of their businesses, for things like new machines and factories, is stagnant.
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China’s factory activity shrank in December to the lowest level in six months, fueling expectations the government may have to act soon to add impetus to the economy, Bloomberg News reported. The official manufacturing purchasing managers index declined to 49, the National Bureau of Statistics said in a statement on Sunday. That was weaker than the median forecast of 49.6 by economists in a Bloomberg survey, and matched the reading seen in June.
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China's "reunification" with Taiwan is inevitable, President Xi Jinping said in his New Year's address on Sunday, striking a stronger tone than he did last year with less than two weeks to go before the Chinese-claimed island elects a new leader, Reuters reported. The Jan. 13 presidential and parliamentary elections are happening at a time of fraught relations between Beijing and Taipei. China has been ramping up military pressure to assert its sovereignty claims over democratically governed Taiwan.
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One of China’s largest investment firms, Citic Trust, had a clear pitch to investors when it was aiming to raise $1.7 billion to fund property development in 2020: There is no safer Chinese investment than real estate, according to a New York Times analysis. The trust, the investment arm of the state-owned financial conglomerate Citic, called housing “China’s economic ballast” and “an indispensable value investment.” The money it raised would be put toward four projects from Sunac China Holdings, a major developer.