The $500 million trust loan originated by China Credit Trust Co., one of the nation’s largest trust companies, has been grabbing headline news lately, for potentially becoming the first large default by a trust company.
Now there seems a solution. The trust company said it found some “entity” who would foot the bill and the trust’s investors can at least get their original investments back.
China’s trust sector has been one of the fastest growing non-bank credits there. As of the third quarter of 2013, overall trust assets reached about RMB 10 trillion, or about 9% of overall credit there, up from RMB 2 trillion at the end of 2009.
Given the rapid growth of trust loans, and that they have an average maturity of two years, we should expect more trusts to become due each quarter – and default and repayment risks are set to rise.
The question is: how risky are trusts in China? Do they pose systematic risk that could melt down China’s banking system?
The short answer is, unlikely......... The bulk of the assets, 101 trillion yuan or 85%, are held by the state banks. They have captive lenders due to lending restrictions and thus their assets are relatively safe. In addition, the vast majority of trust loans are collateralized with real estate or shares at less than 50% loan-to-value, although these assets may very well be over valued.
If trusts start to default, people would just lose confidence in the shadow banking system, which may be a plus to the state-owned large banks. Here is UBS’s Wang again:
The main negative impact of a trust or shadow credit default would be a loss of confidence in China’s shadow banking market. Since trust companies, unlike banks, cannot create money, are not highly leveraged, and have almost no securitization, a trust default should have limited direct impact on China’s
financial system.
In such a scenario, liquidity would most likely will flow back to the banking system (large banks especially), as the latter offer an implicit guarantee and China’s capital account is still largely closed.
To be sure, China has dangerous problems lurking in its monetary system. But the trust companies are unlikely to be it. The interbank credit market is way more dangerous, said Wang.....
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