【英语中国】中国叫停银信合作 信托公司惹同情

Once again, China's trust firms are in trouble with the regulators. This time it's hard not to feel some sympathy for them.

In the late 1990s, trust and investment companies paid the price for years of speculative excess with several high-profile bankruptcies, including Guangdong ITIC and Hainan ITIC. More recently, Jinxin Trust Co. was closed in 2004 after a financial scandal.

In earlier times, trusts were controlled by government agencies, which used them to 'stir-fry' stocks, futures contracts and property. Nowadays they act more like hedge funds, raising money from corporate investors and wealthy individuals to invest in activities like leasing, real-estate purchases and private-equity investments.

But it's not this kind of high-return business that's landed them in trouble. Lately, they'd found a source of steady income by taking loans off the books of banks and packaging them up as trust products.

Banking regulators became alarmed when the volumes grew too big. Over the past six months, trust companies issued 2.5 trillion yuan, or $369.19 billion, of such products, equivalent to all of last year, according to Tang Liqiong of research firm Shanghai Benefit Investment Consulting.

The volumes were large enough to complicate Beijing's efforts to manage economic growth by controlling the total volume of bank loans.

Last Friday, officials at local branches of the China Banking Regulatory Commission abruptly closed down the entire business by ordering trusts to halt all cooperation with banks.

It seems that the trusts were collateral damage from a regulatory crackdown on banks. Over the past three decades, trusts have been guilty of a host of irregularities -- leading some of them to be closed down. But this time they looked like the innocent party, victims of the regulators' loan control policy.

The plight of the trusts can be illustrated with a simple analogy:

A mother wants her elder son to focus on his homework, so she tells him to stay at home and study hard. But the kid gets restless. He turns to his younger brother and says: 'Let me stand on your shoulders so I can climb over the garden wall. I'll bring you candies.' The little one agrees. When mother finds out she scolds the younger kid and takes away his candies, hoping that the punishment will instill discipline in the older brother.

There's something wrong with that logic.

Elder brother--the bank--hasn't been chastened at all, and may well breach the rules again when the opportunity arises. Younger brother--the trust--has been reprimanded for offering a simple favor for a small reward.

Indeed, the margin on repackaged bank loans sold by trusts was only about 0.3%.

Wealth management products are not illegal. And these particular products served as a good way for banks to increase intermediary revenues, cutting reliance on interest income. The products had very little in common with complicated subprime derivative products that got Western banks into such a mess.

Rather than acting like a scolding mom, the CBRC may need to lay down more predictable and far-sighted rules. The effect of this kind of clampdown has been to hurt a fledgling financial sector and dampen enthusiasm for financial innovation.

中国的监管者再一次找上了信托公司的麻烦。这次却让人难以不对后者心生同情。

European Pressphoto Agency中国的银行已经开始将贷款出售给信托公司。上世纪90年代末，信托和投资公司因过度投机而付出了多年的代价，广东国际信托投资公司和海南国际信托投资公司等几家公司的破产引起了广泛的关注。2004年，金新信托公司在发生财务丑闻后关门停业。

早先，信托由政府机构控制，主要用于“炒”股票、期货合同和房地产。现如今，它们的运作更像是对冲基金──从机构投资者和富有的个人手中筹集资金从事出租、购买房地产和私募投资等投资活动。

但并不是此类高收益率的业务使他们陷入了麻烦。近期，他们发现了一个获得稳定收益的来源，即接手银行的贷款，从其账面上剥离，并将其打包成信托产品。

由于数额过大，引起了银行业监管者的警惕。研究公司上海普益投资顾问有限公司普益金融理财研究所的唐丽琼说，过去六个月，信托公司发行了2.5万亿元（合3,691.9亿美元）的此类产品，相当于去年全年的发行量。

数额之大，足以使北京通过控制银行贷款总量管理经济增长的努力变得更加复杂。

7月初，中国银监会地方机构的官员命令信托公司停止与银行的合作，断然关闭了全部此类业务。

信托公司似乎成为了监管者整顿银行业务的间接受害者。过去30年间，信托公司一直是违规行为的主体，导致部分信托公司倒闭。但此次他们看上去像是无辜的一方，成为监管者控制贷款政策的受害者。

一个简单的比喻能够说明信托公司的困境：

母亲希望大儿子专心做功课，于是叫他呆在家里刻苦学习。但孩子有些不安份。他对弟弟说，让我站在你肩上，这样我就能翻过花园的围栏。我会给你带些糖果回来。小儿子答应了。母亲发现后训斥了小儿子并没收了糖果，希望这种惩罚能让大儿子学会守纪律。

逻辑有些问题。

大儿子（银行）丝毫未受到惩罚，一旦再有机会，很可能会再次违规。小儿子（信托公司）为了小恩小惠帮了点小忙却受到了训斥。

事实上，信托公司出售重新包装的银行贷款仅能获得约0.3%的收益率。

财富管理型产品并不违法。这些特殊的产品是银行增加中间业务收入、减少对利差收入依赖的好办法。这些产品与使西方银行深陷泥潭的复杂的次贷衍生品并不相同。

中国银监会或许需要颁布更有预见性和更具预测性的规定，而不是像一个只会教训人的母亲。此类取缔的效果只能是打击一个羽翼未丰的金融行业并抑制对金融创新的热情。