China

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. has agreed to buy a stake in Dalian Wanda Group Co.’s cinema operator as billionaire Wang Jianlin’s real estate-to-entertainment conglomerate turns to another Chinese tech giant and a government-backed company for investments totaling about 7.8 billion yuan ($1.2 billion), Bloomberg News reported. Alibaba is to pay 4.68 billion yuan for a 7.66 percent stake in Wanda Film Holding Co., making the e-commerce giant the second-biggest shareholder, Wanda Film said Monday in a regulatory filing.

China's Alibaba became the biggest shareholder in India's leading online grocer BigBasket after a $300-million funding round, stepping up its rivalry with Amazon in the country, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. Alibaba invested $146 million in the grocer, subscribing to compulsorily convertible preference shares, BigBasket said in a filing to Indian regulators.

A rare event in a corner of China’s credit market is fueling concern that more defaults are looming, adding to strains sparked by the government’s crackdown on leverage, Bloomberg News reported. A timber company in the country’s northeast decided this week not to pay off perpetual bonds despite having an option to do so. That was a first for a junk-rated issuer of such securities in China. Firms that raise money with perpetuals never have to pay off the principal, in theory.

China’s Great Fire Sale looks set to take off. HNA Group Co., the indebted Chinese aviation-to-hotels conglomerate, told creditors it will seek to sell about 100 billion yuan ($16 billion) in assets in the first half of the year to repay debts and stave off a liquidity crunch, according to people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified because the discussions were private, Bloomberg News reported. Under the proposal, about 80 percent of that would be executed in the second quarter, according to the people.

ZZ Capital International Ltd., the private equity firm controlled by Chinese shadow-banking tycoon Xie Zhikun, is preparing to dramatically scale back its operations, according to people familiar with the matter. A number of senior executives at the Hong Kong-based fund, including at least two seasoned dealmakers brought in from global advisory firms, are currently negotiating severance packages, the people said, asking not to be identified because the discussions are private, Bloomberg News reported.

This might be the year China gets its first four-letter default. Or so says S&P Global Ratings, discussing the possibility that an LGFV, or local government financing vehicle, could finally go belly-up, Bloomberg News reported in a commentary. Why should global investors care? More than 95 percent of the $1 trillion asset class is yuan-denominated and trades onshore. The offshore portion is small, and showing little sign of distress. The coupon on a $500 million, three-year dollar bond recently issued by Central Plaza Development Ltd. was 3.875 percent.

China’s crackdown on shadow banking is raising concern among bond investors about local borrowers’ ability to make repayments as a record 1.8 trillion yuan ($285 billion) of notes come due this year, Bloomberg News reported. Regulators have stepped up efforts to patch loopholes in off-balance sheet financing in the last couple weeks, moves that will effectively block most fundraising channels for local borrowers. Concern that some local government financing vehicles may not be able to repay debt has helped push up the yield premiums on AAA rated LGFV notes to near the highest in three years.

China’s Communist leadership has tightened the regulatory screws on some of the nation’s largest, private-sector conglomerates in the name of financial stability, Bloomberg News reported. That’s made things a little less stable for investors in some of those companies’ securities. The effects have varied. Bondholders have generally been the worst hit, though stockholders in some of HNA Group Co.’s units have seen shares suspended from trading.

Strains are spreading in China’s $15 trillion shadow banking industry as investors pull back from the debt-like savings products that helped drive leverage to dangerous levels, Bloomberg News reported. Most affected are some $3.8 trillion of so-called trust products, until now the fastest-growing shadow banking segment and a popular way for debt-ridden property developers and local governments to raise funds from millions of ordinary Chinese.

Dalian Wanda Group has agreed to sell its interests in the high-profile London luxury development project, One Nine Elms, for 59 million pounds, the latest in a string of asset sales that underscore financial strains hitting the Chinese conglomerate, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. The conglomerate, which has businesses that range from real estate to football and cinemas, had initially said it wanted to transfer ownership of some its overseas assets to its holding company as part of a restructuring, keeping them within the group.