Hong Kong lenders feel the pinch of bad Chinese loans
DOW JONES NEWSWIRES SEPTEMBER 29, 2014 8:15PM
After years of boosting lending into mainland China, the city's banks are reporting rising levels of souring debt, prompting worries among some analysts that Hong Kong's smaller banks may need to raise additional capital.
With interest rates expected to rise next year in tandem with moves by the US Federal Reserve, and China's sluggish economy squeezing borrowers' earnings, bad-loan levels at Hong Kong's banks could rise. In a sign of stress last week, two Chinese steel companies -- state-owned Sinosteel Corp. and steel transporter Anhui Wanjiang Logistics (Group) Co. -- said they were having trouble paying back lenders.
"Over the next few years we are going to start to see more challenging conditions for banks in Hong Kong," said Stephen Long, head of financial institutions in the Asia-Pacific region for Moody's Investors Service. The ratings firm has had Hong Kong's banking system on a negative outlook for more than a year.
Hong Kong's banks have been lending heavily to mainland Chinese clients, seeking growth beyond this city of seven million. Last year, one-fifth of Hong Kong's banking-system assets came from loans to mainland China, up from 16 per cent in 2012. Chinese customers have taken advantage of lower interest rates in Hong Kong, which follow those in the US, and the yuan's rising value against the US dollar, to which Hong Kong's currency is pegged.
Overall loans by Hong Kong banks grew 15.5 per cent year over year through July, and have risen 21 per cent a year since 2010, well ahead of the city's economic growth, which was 2.9 per cent last year, according to official statistics.
While the growth in lending is feeding through to higher bad debt at Hong Kong's banks, overall nonperforming loans remain low, at just 0.45 per cent of total loans, and not at dangerous levels, according to the city's de facto central bank, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority.
Of loans made to China, nonperforming loans at five banks in Hong Kong that report such data amounted to 0.69 per cent, on average, at the end of June, compared with a 0.31 per cent total nonperforming-loan ratio. The banks are Bank of China Hong Kong (Holdings) Ltd., the local unit of Bank of East Asia Ltd., Dah Sing Banking Group Ltd., Hang Seng Bank Ltd., and Wing Hang Bank Ltd.
"Cross-border loans extended by Hong Kong banks are deteriorating," said Jim Antos, a Hong Kong-based banking analyst at Mizuho Securities Asia Ltd.
The banks either declined to comment or didn't respond to a request for comment.
Bank of China Hong Kong had overall bad loans of 0.29 per cent of its total lending, but the ratio of bad loans in China was more than three times as high at 0.90 per cent.
The bad-loan ratio at Bank of East Asia, one of the city's largest family-run banks, rose 0.09 percentage point to 0.44 per cent, spurred by mainland Chinese bad loans which rose 0.15 percentage point to 0.59 per cent. About 46 per cent of Bank of East Asia's loans are to China.
Hang Seng Bank, whose parent is the British bank HSBC, is less exposed to China, with just 10 per cent of its lending to the country. Its total for bad loans fell to 0.18 per cent, according to a Macquarie analysis.
The bigger lenders in Hong Kong don't break out their Chinese loan books but, in common with their smaller counterparts, have been raising their exposure to China in recent years.
HSBC Holdings PLC saw its nonperforming-loan ratio for its Asia-wide operations nudge higher to 0.49 per cent in the first half, compared with 0.48 per cent in the previous six months. HSBC declined to comment.
The nonperforming-loan ratio at the Hong Kong unit of Standard Chartered Bank rose to 49 per cent from 0.43 per cent. A spokeswoman for the bank said the bank's loan portfolio is stable and that the increase in bad loans was mostly attributable to suspected loan fraud at Qingdao port, where authorities are investigating the alleged use of the same collateral several times to secure loans from different banks.
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