Two months ago we were amazed to read that according to the latest “deus ex machina” proposed by the PBOC, China would “sweep away” trillions in bad loans by equitizing them in the form of debt-for-equity exchanges. This is how we tried to explain this unprecedented move on March 10 when Reuters first hinted it was coming:
This proposal entails nothing short of a nationalization on a grand scale, one which gives China’s impaired commercial banks – all of which are implicitly state controlled – the “equity keys” to the companies to which they have given secured loans, loans which are no longer performing because the underlying assets are clearly impaired, and where the cash flow generated can’t even cover the interest payments.
In effect, the PBOC is proposing the biggest debt-for-equity swap ever seen. What it also means is that since the secured lender, which is at the top of the capital structure will drop all the way down, it wipes out the existing equity and unsecured debt, and make the banks the new equity owners, and as such China’s commercial banks will no longer be entitled to interest payments or security collateral on their now-equity investment. Finally, while this move does free up loss reserves, it essentially strips banks of their security and asset protection which they enjoyed as secured lenders.
So why is China doing this? By equitizing trillions in bad loans, it frees up the corporate balance sheets to layer on fresh trillions in bad debt, the same debt that pushed these zombie companies into insolvency to begin with.
What this grand equitization does not do, is make the underlying business any more profitable or viable: after all the loans are bad because the companies no longer can generate even the required cash interest payment – as a result of China’s unprecedented excess capacity and low commodity prices which prevent corporate viability. It has little to do with their current balance sheet.
That, however, is irrelevant to the PBOC which is hoping that by taking this step it can magically eliminate trilliions in NPL from commercial bank balance sheets in what is not only the biggest equitization in history, but also the biggest diversion since David Copperfield made the statue of liberty disappear, as instead of keeping the bad loans on the asset side as NPLs, thus assuring at least some recoveries, the banks are crammed down and when the next NPL wave hits, their exposure will be fully wiped out as mere equity stakeholders.
So why are banks agreeing to this? Because they know that as quasi (and not so quasi) state-owned enterprises, China’s commercial banks are wards of the state and when the ultimate impairment wave hits and banks have to write down trillions in “equity investments”, Beijiing will promptly bail them out. Essentially, in one simple move, Beijing is about to “guarantee” trillions in insolvent Chinese debt.
In short, what the PBOC has proposed is the biggest “shadow nationalization” in history, one which will convert trillions in bad loans in insolvent enterprises into trillions in equity investments in the same enterprises, however without any new money actually coming in! Which means it will be up to new credit investors to prop up these failing businesses for a few more quarters before the reorganized equity also has to be wiped out.
We concluded as follows: “While this is surely “good” news for the very short run, as it allows the worst of the worst in China’s insolvent corporate sector to issue even more debt, in the longer run it means that China’s total debt to GDP, which is already at 350% is about to surpass Japan’s gargantuan 400% within a year if not sooner.”
It also means much more deflation, because Chinese corporations which were adding to China’s massive excess capacity bubble and which would have otherwise gone out of business, will remains in business as they no longer have to worry about funding interest (after being effectively nationalized by the state), and instead will pump output at historical levels.
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To be sure, we did not think much more of this proposed grand nationalization in the past two months, because virtually everyone had spoken up against it: from pundits to analysts, even the media figured out what a naive plan this was.
And then today we learned that not only was China going through with this epic debt-for-equity swap, but it has already equitized over $220 billion in non-performing loans.
Note: these are not traditional, Chapter 11 prepacks where the debt is converted into equity and the debt holder gets the keys to the company. In this case, it is the Chinese government itself which indirectly via state-owned banks, has become the de facto owner of countless companies.
As the FT reports:
“Beijing has stepped up its battle against bad debt in China’s banking system, with a state-led debt-for-equity scheme surging in value by about $100bn in the past two months alone. The government-led programme, which forces banks to write off bad debt in exchange for equity in ailing companies, soared in value to hit more than $220bn by the end of April, up from about $120bn at the start of March, according to data from Wind Information.”
As we said two months ago, and as the FT now confirms, this is nothing short of a state-led bailout of virtually every troubled, overindebted industry.
The latest figures for the debt-to-equity swap, and a debt-to-bonds swap initiated last year, show a subtle bailout is already under way. “One can argue the government-led recapitalisation is already happening in an atypical way and thus reducing the need for recapitalisation in its written sense,” said Liao Qiang, director of financial institutions at S&P Global Ratings in Beijing.
Sorry Liao, but ever since the Global Financial Crisis, recapitalization in the “written sense” has meant a direct or indirect taxpayer funded bailout of the most insolvent sector. And that is precisely what China is doing.
To be sure, Beijing’s debt-to-equity strategy should be differentiated from the debt-to-bonds plan unveiled last year: under the latter program, up to Rmb4tn ($612bn) had been approved in 2015 for the debt-to-bonds swap, which has seen state-controlled banks trade short-term loans to companies connected to local governments in exchange for bonds with much longer maturities. The program relieved the pressure on local governments were that were forced to take out bank loans to proceed with public works projects in the absence of municipal bond markets.
However, the debt-to-equity project has received far less enthusiasm from analysts, who say that coercing banks to become stakeholders in companies that could not pay back loans will further weigh down profits this year. Instead of underpinning stability at banks, Mr Liao says the efforts undermine it.
The programmes are just two fronts in Beijing’s battle against bad debt. A third one was revealed recently when China started repackaging its massive NPLs in the form securitizations. As the FT writes, “the government is also reopening the market for securitising bad debt with two deals worth Rmb534m due this month. The efforts have even gone online, with debt managers hawking off bad loans on China’s biggest online retail site.”
The good news for China is that by swapping one bad asset into another, it may have confused the market long enough to buy a few quarters of time.
The bad news is that, as we first reported last November citing Fitch calculations, China’s bad debt “neutron bomb” is roughly 20% of total bank loans. Last week, CLSA’s Frarncis Cheung came up with his own calculation of China’s NPL program which he see as anywhere between 15% and 19%. Here is his analysis:
As analysts are now competing to come up with estimates of the real level of stressed loans in the China banking system and related shadow finance cycles, a good starting point can be found in the IMF’s latest Global Financial Stability Report published in April. This, based on a sample of 2,871 listed and unlisted nonfinancial Chinese companies, calculates that 15.5% of total commercial bank loans to the corporate sector are “potentially at risk”. This debt-at-risk ratio is defined as having an interest coverage ratio (EBITDA dividend by interest expenses) of below one. Assuming a 60% loss ratio, the IMF puts potential bank losses at 7% of GDP, a level which it still considers as “manageable” while noting that for this to remain the case “prompt action” to address excess capacity and the like needs to occur.
All this is perfectly reasonable. Still Francis Cheung makes the valid point in his report that the IMF has relaxed its criteria from when a similar exercise was done in 2014. Then the debt-atrisk estimate was done using an interest coverage ratio of less than 2x. Now it is 1x. If the same 2x threshold was employed in 2015 the debt-at-risk estimate would rise to 28% of total corporate loans. Meanwhile, Cheung estimates, using the latest listed A-share company data for 2015, China’s bad-debt ratio or NPL ratio at 15-19% based on companies’ interest coverage and debt sustainability.
In short, whether China’s NPL are 15%, 19% or even 28% of total debt, these are absolutely gargantuan amounts – recall that China will report roughly $35 trillion in bank assets this quarter.
To believe that any government, even that of China, will be able to cover up what is indeed the “neutron bomb” (as we first dubbed it) under the entire Chinese financial system with some rhetorical sleight of hand, and shifting non-performing assets from one bucket into another without actually addressing the underlying issue, namely collapsing of cash flow, is the height of stupidity and arrogance. Which probably explains why so many sellside banks see this as a viable plan.
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