In the past September, the US financial market was clouded:
On September 7, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which once occupied half of the US mortgage market, were taken over by the US government.
—— On September 15, Lehman Brothers, the fourth largest investment bank in the United States, filed for bankruptcy protection, and Merrill Lynch, the third largest investment bank, was acquired by Bank of America. On September 2 1, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, the first and second largest investment banks in the United States, were transformed into bank holding companies, and Bear Stearns, the fifth largest investment bank, was acquired by JPMorgan Chase in March this year. At this point, the five major investment banks in the United States were wiped out.
-more financial giants have also fallen. On September 16, American International Group (AIG), the world's largest insurance company, was in a hurry. On September 25, Washington Mutual, the largest savings bank in the United States, was taken over by the US federal regulators. On September 29th, Wachovia was acquired by Citibank.
Rome was not built in a day. The seeds of the crisis were actually planted several years ago.
The so-called subprime mortgage refers to a kind of housing loan designed by American mortgage institutions for people with low income and poor credit records. Compared with "high-quality" loans, these people are at greater risk of repayment default, so they are called "subprime loans". From 20065438+0 to 2005, the American real estate market continued to prosper, which stimulated the rapid development of subprime mortgage. In 2006, the total size of subprime loans in the United States has reached $640 billion, 5.3 times that of 200 1.
Moreover, a financial innovation chain has been formed around subprime mortgage: residents apply for loans from mortgage institutions such as commercial banks, and mortgage institutions sell loans to Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and investment banks. These institutions regard loans as subprime bonds and sell them to global investors including commercial banks, insurance companies, pensions and hedge funds. At the same time, insurance companies such as AIG also provide guarantees for such subprime loans.
During the hot period of American housing market, this asset securitization chain was "perfect", and buyers, mortgage institutions, investment banks, insurance companies and investors were all happy. However, things are unpredictable. With the continuous interest rate increase of 65,438+07 by the Federal Reserve, the repayment burden of subprime home buyers is increasing. At the same time, housing prices in the United States have peaked, and it is difficult for subprime mortgage buyers to obtain financing by selling or mortgaging their houses. As a result, more and more subprime mortgage buyers are unable to repay their loans. As a result, mortgage institutions have formed a large number of sub-prime bad debts; Due to the loss of repayment sources, a large number of debts in the hands of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, investment banks and various investors around the world have depreciated sharply, and the financial crisis has surged since then.
The American financial storm is shaking the world. What impact does this storm have on China's financial industry?
The impact of direct losses on the profitability of China Bank is relatively limited.
On September 15, China Commercial Bank announced its holdings of Lehman Brothers bonds. "The bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers has limited direct impact on financial institutions in China. So far, several Chinese-funded financial institutions that have disclosed their shareholdings hold about $700 million of Lehman Brothers bonds, which has relatively limited impact on the profitability of banks. These bonds may not be completely lost, but also depends on the disposal of Lehman Brothers assets. " Lian Ping, chief economist of Bank of Communications, said.
In this crisis, commercial banks with a large proportion of traditional deposit and loan business are relatively less affected, while investment banks mainly engaged in asset management and securities business are in a worrying situation. Wang, deputy director of the Institute of Finance of China Academy of Social Sciences, said: "This is because the commercial banking industry has an international supervision system and there are relevant regulations on the core capital adequacy ratio of banks. Banks withdraw risk reserves every year to make up for losses in time. However, investment banks do not have these provision mechanisms. Once risks occur, there is no capital to make up for losses, and there is no deposit to supplement liquidity at ordinary times. The main problem of this crisis is financial derivatives with high debt ratio and high leverage ratio. "
"Commercial banks in China have hardly been affected by this crisis," Wang said, because on the whole, the proportion of foreign currency assets of China commercial banks is relatively small. At present, the main source of income of China's commercial banks is deposit and loan spreads. This year, the spreads of major commercial banks are very high, reaching about 4 percentage points, while the spreads of commercial banks are only 1.5-2 percentage points in general. Therefore, in the first half of this year, the growth rate of bank net profit exceeded 60%. Moreover, the savings rate in China is very high, increasing at the rate of 17% every year, which brings sufficient liquidity to banks.
Brokers in China will not be directly impacted, and QDII will suffer heavy losses.
"Because China's securities companies have basically no overseas investment, the factors that lead to the crisis of foreign investment banks do not exist in China at present, so China's securities companies will not be directly affected in this crisis." Securities researcher Wang said.
He analyzed that there are two main reasons for dragging American investment banks into the quagmire. First, the leverage ratio is too high, that is, controlling too many assets with less self-owned capital. Compared with commercial banks, the capital strength of investment banks is relatively limited. In order to get more profits, most investment banks develop their business in excess of the proportion. Generally speaking, the leverage ratio of 10 times is more appropriate. However, driven by the high-risk and high-return strategy, the leverage ratio of several investment banks in the United States has reached 30 times or even 40 times. In this way, once the market changes, it will bring huge losses. Second, there is a problem with business distribution, which is excessively concentrated in high-risk businesses. Take Lehman as an example. As a relatively small investment bank on Wall Street, Lehman invested too much in the fixed income market and mortgage bond market. During the boom of the real estate market, mortgage bond business brought huge profits to it. However, with the bursting of the real estate bubble, the most profitable business in the past has become a source of huge losses.
Compared with securities companies, QDII, which has only started to "test the water" in the international market in the past year or two, is not so "lucky". Under the influence of the global capital market turmoil, QDII mostly suffered heavy losses and failed. Moreover, this crisis reflects that domestic investment institutions obviously lack understanding of the risks in the international market. Take Hua 'an Classic Allocation Fund, the QDII product that the mainland fund industry waded overseas for the first time, as an example. Most of its principal is invested in fixed income products, and the guarantor Lehman Brothers provides 100% principal guarantee. It seems that the risk of this fund is low. However, when Lehman Brothers was in crisis, it brought great uncertainty to this fund.
The transmission of foreign insurance companies to overseas financial risks is weak.
10 On June 6th, China Ping An Insurance announced that it planned to account for the provision for impairment of Fortis Group's stock investment in the third quarter financial report of 2008, and transfer the loss of market price change of about15.7 billion yuan to the income statement. At the same time, in view of the current market environment and conditions, the company terminated the agreement to invest 50% equity of Fortis Investment Management Company at a consideration of 26,543.8+0.5 billion euros.
The person in charge of Ping An Group said: Compared with the total assets of the Group, Ping An's overseas investment loss only accounts for about 3%, which has limited impact on the company as a whole. At present, the Group and its subsidiaries have sufficient capital and their solvency will remain above 300%. According to the needs of business development and overall strategy, the Group recently launched a capital increase plan to inject 20 billion yuan into life insurance to support the rapid development of life insurance business.
Judging from the current disclosure, major domestic insurance companies such as China Life Insurance, China Ping An and China Pacific Insurance have not invested in Lehman, Merrill Lynch or AIG's related bonds and financial products. Due to the small scale of overseas direct investment and indirect investment of domestic insurance companies, they are relatively less affected by the international financial turmoil.
With the American government taking over American International Group, many policyholders are worried: Will foreign insurance companies operating in China suffer heavy losses from their foreign parent companies or major shareholders in the financial turmoil, and the interests of policyholders will be damaged?
In this regard, experts explained that AIA, which operates in China, is a wholly-owned subsidiary of AIG. However, AIA is an independent corporate enterprise. Even if the parent company American International Group encounters financial difficulties, it is still independent of its subsidiary AIA and will not have a direct impact on its business. In addition, the current national laws also fully protect the interests of the insured. /kloc-In September of 0/6, the China Insurance Regulatory Commission, the Ministry of Finance and the Central Bank jointly issued and implemented the Measures for the Administration of Insurance Protection Funds, stipulating that if a life insurance company is revoked or declared bankrupt, its life insurance contract must be transferred to other life insurance companies. If the transfer agreement cannot be reached with other life insurance companies, it shall be accepted by the life insurance company designated by China CIRC. This means that even if the insurance company goes bankrupt, the loss of the rights and interests of the insured will not exceed 10%.
Insiders pointed out that although dozens of foreign insurance companies have entered the China market, their market share is less than 10%, which has a weak transmission to overseas financial risks and will not have a significant impact on the insurance industry in China.
China's financial reform has achieved remarkable results, and its financial system is stable and safe.
"China's financial industry was hardly affected by the US financial crisis. Moreover, China's financial system is still very stable and safe. Therefore, we should have full confidence in China's finance. " Ding Zhijie, vice president of university of international business and economics Institute of Finance, said.
Since the beginning of this year, although China's economic growth rate has declined, the fundamentals of economic development have not changed and continue to develop in the expected direction of macroeconomic regulation and control. The stable development of China's financial industry has a rich "soil".
In recent years, China's financial reform and development has made great progress, the shareholding system reform of state-owned commercial banks has achieved remarkable results, the operating mechanism of small and medium-sized financial institutions has been continuously improved, and the profitability and risk resistance of various financial institutions have been improved. The stable development of China's financial industry has a strong "constitution".
The regulatory authorities strengthen prudential supervision, and the government plays an active and effective role in promoting financial reform and development. For example, in the past two years, the banking supervision department has continuously warned the banking industry of risks and timely increased the down payment ratio of housing mortgage loans. In addition, commercial banks are cautious in lending. Therefore, compared with American subprime mortgage, the asset quality of China mortgage loan is much higher. The data shows that in the first half of this year, the NPL ratio of real estate development loans and personal mortgage loans of China's largest commercial bank, China Industrial and Commercial Bank, was only 1.84% and 0.74% respectively. It can be said that the stable development of China's financial industry has a correct "thrust".
Correctly grasp the relationship between financial innovation and financial supervision
Although China's financial industry "dodged a bullet" in this crisis, we should not be complacent, but learn from it and get enlightenment.
This crisis reminds us that we should objectively understand the role and risks of financial innovation. Financial innovations such as asset securitization can make credit risk flow and disperse in the market, but it can't fundamentally eliminate the risk. In fact, the expansion of participants makes supervision more complicated, while the extension of the chain increases vulnerability. "So, when dealing with financial innovation, we can't give up food because of choking, nor can we be blindly superstitious." Ding Zhijie said.
This crisis reminds us that the government should play an important role in financial reform and development, such as financial supervision, financial rescue and maintaining market confidence. Some experts believe that in this crisis, the Fed's fault lies not in saving the market, but in the previous deregulation and fueling the bubble.
This crisis reminds us that in today's era, with the increasing integration of international financial markets, financial risks spread more rapidly and widely. In the process of opening wider to the outside world, China should pay attention to preventing the spread of the financial crisis.
In addition, the US government's financial rescue methods are also worth learning. Peng Xingyun, director of the Monetary Theory and Monetary Policy Office of the Institute of Finance of China Academy of Social Sciences, believes that the US Congress has repeatedly discussed and voted on the $700 billion bailout plan, which has increased the content of protecting taxpayers' interests. During the rescue process, the US government also "punished" the problem financial institutions in different ways. For example, the Federal Reserve rescued AIG because it is closely related to the lives of ordinary people, and it is not easy to rescue ordinary commercial institutions such as Lehman Brothers. For another example, after the United States took over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, it immediately changed its management. These practices clearly declare that the United States will not encourage moral hazard of financial institutions for temporary financial stability.