【英语中国】Lex专栏：中国农行上市

The ATM for Chinese banks is sputtering. After coughing up some $100bn in the past five years, including a record $22bn for Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, investors are sated and not a little jaded. Agricultural Bank of China, the last – and grottiest – of the Big Four to list, has been forced to temper its lofty $30bn ambitions by a third. Bank of Communications, part-owned by HSBC, slashed its planned rights issue by a fifth to under $5bn.

About time. Sure, banks are a proxy on economic growth, which China delivers in spades. But they are also engines for that growth, which can backfire. The orgy of lending – $585bn in the first six months of the year, coincidentally identical to the government's fiscal stimulus, on top of $1,400bn last year – will come back to haunt Chinese lenders as surely as it did their Japanese peers before them. Capital adequacy ratios are not Teflon-coated; provisioning at newcomer Akbank is ropy. These are sprawling banks struggling to diversify away from bread-and-butter lending while still being called upon to mop up government bonds, however derisory the yield. Chinese banks boast a cast-iron safety net in the guise of government; but that is no longer a unique attribute.

All of which raises question marks over the banks' generous valuations, of about 1.6-2 times book values based on Hong Kong share prices. US banks are bruised, but is a Chinese lender really worth twice JPMorgan's multiple, for example? For all the hype that accompanied the Chinese banks' privatisations earlier this decade, the trio have produced total returns of 5-15 per cent per annum over the past three years, according to Bloomberg, well below earnings growth. Restraint, such as it is, has come not a moment too soon.

中国各大银行的提款机正开始出现故障。投资者在过去五年里投入大约1000亿美元（包括中国工商银行220亿美元的创纪录上市）后，感觉已经“吃饱”，而且还有不止一点点腻烦。四大银行中最后上市（同时也是最差的）的中国农业银行(Agricultural Bank of China)，已被迫将筹资300亿美元的宏伟目标缩减三分之一。汇丰(HSBC)持有部分股份的交通银行(Bank of Communications)，则已将其计划进行的配股规模缩减五分之一，至不到50亿美元。

早该如此了。没错，银行是经济增长的代表，而中国在经济增长方面表现非凡。但银行也是经济增长的发动机，这一点是可能适得其反的。放贷狂潮——今年头六个月达到5850亿美元，恰好与政府刺激方案的规模相同，而去年全年放贷已达1.4万亿美元——到头来肯定将困扰中国各银行，就像它们此前困扰日本各银行一样。资本充足率并不具有特氟龙涂层；市场新参与者农行的不良贷款拨备覆盖率质量很低的。这些是规模庞大的银行，难以从放贷这一主营业务向其它领域拓展，却仍被指望吸收政府债券，无论其收益率多么微不足道。中国各银行理论上有政府充当后台，提供牢不可破的安全网；但那已不再是一种独特属性。

所有这些都给中国各银行的较高估值带来问号；以香港股价计算，中国各上市银行的市净率约为1.6至2倍。美国银行业固然遭受了重创，但中国某家银行的估值真的理应两倍于摩根大通(JPMorgan)吗？尽管这个十年早些时候围绕中国各大银行的上市出现了种种炒作，但根据彭博社(Bloomberg)数据，三家上市银行在过去三年带来了每年5%至15%的总回报，远低于利润增长。尽管不怎么样，但克制来得正是时候。

Lex专栏是由FT评论员联合撰写的短评，对全球经济与商业进行精辟分析。

译者/和风