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Grab’s record breaking SPAC merger left more than $2 billion on the table
Grab’s record-breaking deal to merge with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) will raise an eye-popping $4.5 billion in cash. A quick recap: Singapore-based Grab is poised to have a market value of around $39.6 billion after it combines with a SPAC called Altimeter Growth. Altimeter is basically a $500 million pot of money listed on Nasdaq that was looking for a target to merge with (which is why SPACS are sometimes called “blank check” companies).
13h ago
Reuters
Analysis: As U.S. watchdog steps up scrutiny, Grab deal signals blank-check party peak
While the blank-check deals market reached new heights this week with Grab Holdings' record $40 billion merger, some lawyers and regulatory experts said the exuberance was unlikely to last as the U.S. securities watchdog steps up scrutiny of such deals. Southeast Asia's largest ride-hailing and food delivery firm on Tuesday clinched a merger with special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, Altimeter Growth Corp, paving the way for a U.S. listing and the biggest-ever blank-check company deal. The blockbuster merger underscores Wall Street's mania for the deals in which listed shells take private companies public, with a record $100 billion raised through initial public offerings (IPOs) in the United States this year.
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FX Empire
Why Shares Of Goldman Sachs Are Up By 5% Today?
The stock is up by 30% year-to-date.
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Reuters
World stocks soar to fresh peaks, dollar slips
Major global stock indexes scaled new peaks on Wednesday after upbeat U.S. and European earnings pointed to a strong recovery from the coronavirus pandemic, while the dollar dipped to three-week lows as Treasury yields held below recent highs. High-flying growth stocks declined on Wall Street, sending the benchmark S&P 500 and Nasdaq lower in afternoon trade, while underpriced value stocks rose, lifting the Dow to a new record. U.S. import prices increased more than expected in March, lifted by higher costs for petroleum products and tight supply chains in the latest data to show inflation is heating up as economies reopen.
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BBC
Asda to axe 1,200 bakery jobs as shoppers shun loaves
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Reuters
Coinbase listing marks latest step in crypto's march to the mainstream
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Bloomberg
Pigs Are Seen as Next Big Thing in Xinjiang as Cotton Dims
(Bloomberg) -- China should build more pig farms in Xinjiang as its cotton industry is under threat from declining soil fertility, according to a government researcher, commenting after some international companies avoided fiber produced in the region over allegations of forced labor.Hog farming could become a pillar industry in the region and supply 10% of the nation’s output, up from 1% now, wrote Mei Xinyu, a think-tank researcher at the commerce ministry. Xinjiang already grows more than 80% of the country’s cotton, and some of those pig farms would replace fields sown to the fiber that have been degraded.The suggestion comes after the U.S. banned imports of textile products containing cotton from Xinjiang in protest over alleged ill-treatment of its ethnic Uighur Muslim minority, and several western countries slapped sanctions on China over the same issue.Cotton is the most profitable crop in the region, and rotation to other crops is not in the interests of growers and hard to achieve on a large scale, Mei said on the WeChat account of Beijing News, a government-run newspaper. The only feasible option is to build more hog farms, he said, and they can use local grain to feed the pigs or import supplies from neighboring countries.Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, a military-affiliated entity, and other groups have already started building several large-scale pig farms, which will increase output significantly in the next two years. In the meantime, animal waste from the farms could be used to boost soil fertility, which has been exhausted by extensive use of chemical fertilizer, said Mei.“The most desirable way to solve this problem is to raise pigs and grow cotton simultaneously, and return a large amount of manure from pig farms to the fields after treatment to enhance soil fertility and increase profits,” Mei said.China should expand hog farms in areas like Xinjiang and Heilongjiang, which are less population-intensive than the inland provinces like Sichuan, Hunan and Henan which dominate the country’s pork production, Mei said. Outbreaks of African swine fever that started in 2018 slashed hog herds by as much as half and sent meat imports spiraling to a record.(Updates with details from the report throughout)For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2021 Bloomberg L.P.
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Reuters
Asian shares defensive, dollar struggles near 1-mth lows
Asian shares were on the backfoot on Thursday following mixed cues from Wall Street where a sharp sell-off in the largest bitcoin exchange Coinbase hit tech shares while the dollar index struggled near one-month lows. MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan paused after two straight days of gains. Japan's Nikkei rose 0.2% while South Korea's KOSPI index was up a tad.
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J&J Covid Vaccine Pause Appears To Weigh On Airline, Casino, Hotel Stocks Early
After a dull Monday, investors awake this morning to a couple of big news items. That being said, both the consumer price index (CPI) and a pause in the use of Johnson & Johnson’s (NYSE: JNJ) Covid vaccine seem to be having a muted impact on the market. We’ll get to the JNJ vaccine withdrawal, but first a look at CPI: It came in at 0.6% for March, up from 0.4% in February and just a bit above analysts’ average estimate of 0.5%. The fact that it’s up isn’t too surprising considering all the inflation warnings from the Fed lately, but it’s good to see it’s only a little above expectations. That’s in contrast to last Friday’s producer price index, which came in way, way, above expectations. Maybe this will settle inflation fears a bit. The other big news is the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) decision to temporarily pause use of JNJ’s Covid vaccine due to a handful of blood clots. This isn’t great news, obviously, but it’s nothing people need to go crazy over. We had good momentum with vaccinations heading into summer, and this might slow the momentum, but the other two vaccines are still working well. Vaccine Pause Hits Reopening Shares Also, people shouldn’t think of vaccines as a simple product without potential problems. No one knows yet if these blood clots are a game changer for the JNJ vaccine, but it isn’t surprising that a complication got reported, simply because vaccines aren’t widgets. Like any medical product, they’re complex and can have different effects on different people. Hopefully this gets resolved quickly and the JNJ vaccine comes back. It’s a handful of cases (six cases after 6.8 million vaccinations) and the FDA said it acted “out of an abundance of caution.” It’s unclear how long it might take to get to the bottom of this, but the other vaccines were already being used millions of times a day in the U.S., and that continues. The FDA may want to examine more data before allowing JNJ to come back, but in a worst-case scenario it’s off the market for an extended period, putting more pressure on supplies of the other vaccines. The JNJ pause could put some pressure on some of the “reopening” stocks and sectors until things get sorted out. Already this morning we’re seeing shares of airlines, casinos, and cruise lines turning lower in pre-market trading. An FDA press conference scheduled for 10 a.m. ET today might grab Wall Street’s attention. Though reopening shares start the day under pressure, a new JP Morgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM) note suggests the economy could fully reopen by July 4. Whether this JNJ development affects that timeline is unclear, but it’s nice to think JPM might be right. Meanwhile, volatility remains light and Bitcoin is now above $62,000. The Cboe Volatility Index (VIX) is up, but still below 17.5, which is amazing when you remember how long it spent above 50 last year. Unless there’s big news out of the FDA press conference, trading could be pretty slow today as investors await tomorrow’s onslaught of big bank earnings. Summer Of 2020 Revisited? Nope, you’re not on a time machine back to last summer. Those really were NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ: NVDA) and Tesla Inc (NASDAQ: TSLA) rolling up big gains yesterday while this year’s “reopening” darlings like airlines, energy companies, and entertainment firms took a back seat. This was before today’s JNJ vaccine news, remember. Both NVDA and TSLA rallied on specific news, with TSLA benefiting from an analyst upgrade while NVDA raised its Q1 revenue guidance and introduced several new products, which actually might have weighed on shares of some of its competitors including Intel Corporation (NASDAQ: INTC) and Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMD). NVDA and TSLA formed the vanguard Monday, but for the most part stocks marched in place as investors seemed to stay on the sidelines waiting for earnings. It all starts tomorrow when we hear from JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM), Goldman Sachs Group Inc (NYSE: GS), and Wells Fargo & Co (NYSE: WFC). For the first time in a while, the big banks have a tailwind and investors can focus more on traditional bank functions and less on the industry’s efforts to bail out the floodwaters. The 10-year yield is much higher than it was six months ago, so they can make more on the spread and that should go right to the bottom line. Beyond that, trading is an important part of many bank businesses (especially some of the big Wall Street sluggers like JPM and GS), and they possibly saw benefits in their bond trading during Q1 thanks to opportunities there. As always, investors should consider focusing on the separate fortunes of equities and fixed income trading, where there’s often bifurcation. Heading into earnings season, FactSet projected overall S&P 500 Financial Sector (IXM) earnings to rise 78.7% year-over-year in Q1, so things are definitely looking up. In fact, the average Wall Street Financial earnings forecast has risen pretty substantially even from just a month ago. The banking sector has sputtered a bit lately after a great start to the year. Energy also slowed its pace a bit. Some analysts see this as a temporary slowdown while the Treasury market continues to consolidate. If Q1 earnings and coming economic data shape up as strong as many Wall Street watchers are starting to think they will, 10-year yields could start to rise again and lift the so-called “cyclicals” like Financials and Energy that tend to do better in a recovering economy. Pandemic Provides The Backdrop There’s always a caveat, and here’s one: The Covid situation isn’t really retreating much. Average caseloads are still rising despite the great vaccine progress. Even Fed Chairman Jerome Powell expressed caution over the weekend, telling “60 Minutes” that he’s concerned about the recent case spike and its possible impact on the economy. And of course, there was today’s bad news about the JNJ vaccine being paused due to blood clots. If cases keep climbing, watch the other data like hospitalizations and deaths carefully. They tend to be lagging indicators, and if they stay relatively tame it could mean the vaccinations are protecting some of the most vulnerable people. Leaving Covid behind for the moment, FactSet pegs overall S&P 500 earnings to rise 24.5% in Q1, led by Consumer Discretionary, Financials, Materials, and Info Tech. Energy and Industrials are the only sectors analysts see in the red with their Q1 earnings results, and those are also two of the three S&P sectors expected to have falling revenue, too. Typically, analysts get too conservative with their estimates ahead of earnings season, so FactSet factors that in and says it’s more likely actual earnings will rise 28% when all is said and done. That would be the highest earnings growth in more than 10 years. At the high end, FactSet estimated earnings could grow as much as 37.6% in Q1. Margin Call? Not Yet Some people wonder if margins might start eroding, possibly due to rising costs like we saw in the producer price index (PPI) last week. So far, no sign of that. S&P Global expects margins to rise this year and next. Of course, the Fed keeps telling everyone that any price growth we see here is probably temporary, and easy comparisons with soft year-ago inflation could over-dramatize how much things are actually going up. By later in 2021, it might be easier to get a sense not only of how transient or non-transient this inflationary pressure is, but also whether the Biden administration has the ability to push through a corporate tax increase, which is another thing that could potentially hurt margins. CHART OF THE DAY: CAN THE U.S. DOLLAR HANG ON? The U.S. Dollar Index ($DXY—candlestick) has generally remained within its upward channel (yellow lines) since the beginning of the year. Can it maintain this move as it skirts its support level once again? Although $DXY is moving up today, it doesn’t mean it can’t break below the lower channel. It could still go either way—retest the 90 level (blue line), which was the Feb low or break above 92.5 (purple line), the early March high, and resume its move within the channel. Data source: ICE Data Services. Chart source: The thinkorswim® platform. For illustrative purposes only. Past performance does not guarantee future results. The Dollar’s Dilemma: While the U.S. Dollar Index ($DXY) is still trading within its uptrend channel (see chart above) since Jan. of this year, it’s hard to ignore that it is trading close to a critical support level. If it does break below the lower channel, which at the moment sits at around 92.10, we could see $DXY test the 90 level, the low it hit at the end of Feb, or it could continue moving within its upward channel. When it comes to the U.S. dollar, a lot also depends on economic fundamentals such as actions taken by the Fed and other central banks. Are they going to be more dovish or hawkish, relatively speaking? Since the U.S. dollar trades against other currencies, it’s a good idea to know where other central banks stand with respect to interest rate decisions. It can shed some light on global economic growth outlook. Another piece of economic data to keep an eye on this week: retail sales and inflation. Both could have an impact on the U.S. dollar. Bank Earnings, Net Margin, and the Rate Watch: As big banks prepare to open their Q1 books this week, it’s important to focus on recent moves in interest rates. On the face of it, the rise in long rates—particularly when accompanied by dovish talk from the Fed about leaving short rates at the zero bound—is the optimal setup for the banks. And sure enough, over the past three months the yield spread between the 3-month Treasury and the 10-year Treasury widened by over 80 basis points to its highest level in four years—a positive development for an industry that’s business model is centered on borrowing (and paying deposits on) the short end and lending on the long end. But like most things economic, there’s always “the other hand.” A nominal rise in mortgage rates, all else equal, should pad the bottom line of lenders. But when you consider the amount of exuberance in the housing market—think Lennar Corporation (NYSE: LEN), KB Home (NYSE: KBH) and other home builders that have seen shares blow through all-time highs in the middle of a pandemic—it’s possible that rising mortgage rates could eventually eat into the balance sheets of homeowners and small businesses, and to the housing market in general. Anyone who was around for the last recession knows what can happen to banks when a frothy housing market turns south. It’s another reminder to keep a close eye on bank earnings, as banks tend to be tied into the rest of the economy. For now, however, banks head into earnings season with the sun shining brightly. When Things Look Good, People Worry: A couple things to consider here as the market finishes up its “breather” ahead of earnings: First, there’s concern among some analysts that a couple of economic indicators like manufacturing growth and consumer confidence may be at “toppy” levels. Manufacturing, for instance, is at multi-decade highs. While that may be true, you can’t say for sure that there’s anything magical about current numbers just because they match, say, a level not seen since 1984. The numbers don’t know or care what happened back in the first Reagan term. They just do what they do. A fresh University of Michigan sentiment report Friday could give more insight into any perceived “toppiness.” Also, volatility has gotten so low recently, with the VIX finishing below 17 again yesterday, that people are starting to worry it might go up again. This sounds like traditional “wall of worry” talk and another sign that this rally just doesn’t get much respect. TD Ameritrade® commentary for educational purposes only. Member SIPC. Photo by Lukas Krasa on Unsplash See more from BenzingaClick here for options trades from BenzingaBeyond The Banks: Other Major Firms Reporting This Week Include PepsiCo, DeltaInvestors Appear To Be Treading Lightly Ahead Of Bank Earnings Next Week© 2021 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.
2d ago
Reuters
Russian watchdog opens case against Yandex over alleged competition law breach
Russia's Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) on Tuesday said it had initiated proceedings against internet giant Yandex over alleged competition law violations on the company's search engine. The state agency told Yandex in February it had created unequal market conditions for general online search services, that it was preferentially promoting its own products and asked it to stop. Yandex asked for extra time to respond to the accusations earlier this month.
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Coin Rivet
Bitcoin rally fueled by institutional investment, says Bitfinex CTO
Bitcoin has impressively surged to a new record high of $63,500 this morning following a two-month period of consolidation beneath the $60,000 level of resistance.
2d ago
Yahoo Finance
JPMorgan Q1 earnings blow past estimates; Dimon sees 'extremely robust, multi-year growth'
The firm released $5.2 billion of credit reserves, bolstering EPS.
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CoinDesk
Bitcoin Analysts Set Sights on $70K (Even $80K) After All-Time High
Bitcoin is seen rising towards $70K by May according to several analysts interviewed by CoinDesk.
1d ago
Bloomberg
Red Lights Flashing in Credit Markets as Huarong Concern Grows
(Bloomberg) -- Credit markets in Asia have been shaken by a selloff in one of China’s largest bad-debt managers, raising concern that other heavily leveraged borrowers may also stumble.The Markit iTraxx Asia ex-Japan credit-default swap index of investment-grade bonds widened about 2 basis points, after recent reports of a looming restructuring at bad-debt manager China Huarong Asset Management Co., traders said. The gauge is set for a seventh day of increases, the longest streak since December 2018, and is at its highest since October last year, according to data from CMA.The concerns about Huarong that are shaking the wider Asian debt market started after the firm joined dozens of Hong Kong-listed companies in failing to publish its 2020 earnings by a March 31 deadline. Caixin attributed the delay to plans for a significant financial restructuring.The timing isn’t ideal. A run-up in rates globally earlier last month fueled by concerns about inflation contributed to some of the worst bond losses in decades. While credit markets around the world had calmed in recent weeks, the China woes are pushing up financing costs again in Asia, even as they have fallen back in the U.S. and Europe.Asian investment-grade dollar note spreads widened about 2-3 basis points Tuesday, traders said. They are also set for a seventh-straight day of expansion, the longest streak in more than five months, and are at the highest in more than two months, according to a Bloomberg Barclays index.Click here for a look at what’s next for Huarong“Due to perceptions of Huarong as a systemically important entity and bonds being widely held, concerns over its near-term liquidity are having a spillover impact on spreads,” said Ek Pon Tay, a senior portfolio manager for emerging market debt at BNP Paribas Asset Management. Regulators may eventually need to shore up market confidence, he said.AsiaThe impact was even bigger on Chinese issuers, whose investment-grade dollar bonds spreads widened 3 to 8 basis points. Prices on the nation’s high-yield notes fell 1 to 3 cents on the dollar, traders said.Prices on notes from Chinese property developers Logan Group and Powerlong Real Estate Holdings plunged by recordsSigns of distress have also spread in other pockets of Asia, including debt from Indonesian clothing firms. Read the latest Indonesia Credit Wrap for more analysis“Increasing rate volatility and selective idiosyncratic events” have pushed up risk premiums, said Arthur Lau, head of Asia ex-Japan fixed income at PineBridge Investments Asia Ltd. in Hong Kong. However, given that the underlying Asia economic fundamentals and corporate credit profiles remain relatively healthy, “I think we should see a calmer market once the interest rate risks have subsided,” he saidAnd for now at least, a number of companies continued to offer debt despite the increase in financing costs. Click here for the Asia BondwrapChinese internet giant Tencent Holdings Ltd. is holding investor calls from Tuesday and may price about $4 billion of bonds as early as WednesdayU.S.United Airlines Holdings Inc. announced Monday that it will raise $9 billion from institutional investors through a combination of loans and bonds.Every major U.S. airline has now shunned the U.S. government’s $25 billion emergency pandemic loans, avoiding the strings attached to that program in favor of the credit market’s warm embraceCitigroup Inc. and Bank of America Corp. are jointly building a new fixed-income trading platform, with an initial focus on collateralized loan obligationsEuropeSSAs are likely to retain their dominance of Europe’s syndicated bond market this week, according to a Bloomberg survey.That extends this year’s leading run for the sectorThe U.K.’s lockdown easing was taking another step forward on Monday with non-essential retailers reopening; still, U.K. credit broadly looks expensive after a significant rally since the selloff last March amid soaring business confidenceFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2021 Bloomberg L.P.
2d ago
Yahoo Finance
Stock market news live updates: Stocks end mixed after bank earnings, Coinbase falls below debut price
Stocks traded mixed Wednesday afternoon, with traders digesting a slew of earnings results from big banks that largely topped expectations. The Dow set a fresh record high as shares of Goldman Sachs advanced after the company reported better-than-expected quarterly results.
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Reuters
Gold falls as firmer bond yields dull appeal
Gold fell on Wednesday as an uptick in U.S. Treasury yields weighed on bullion's appeal, while investors awaited speeches by several Federal Reserve officials in the wake of data showing higher inflation. Spot gold fell 0.3% to $1,739.00 per ounce, as of 10:45 a.m. EDT (1445 GMT). The uptick in bond yields seem to be "adding some very light pressure to the (gold) market," said David Meger, director of metals trading at High Ridge Futures.
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Why Coinbase is a 'must-own' stock poised to hit $600: analyst
Coinbase opening at $381 is just the beginning of a climb to $600, according to one analyst.
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Taiwan says its chip firms will adhere to new U.S. rules blacklisting China supercomputing entities
Taiwan said on Wednesday its chip companies will adhere to U.S. rules after Washington added seven Chinese supercomputing entities last week to an economic blacklist and after a Taipei-based chipmaker halted orders from one of the entities named. The U.S. Commerce Department said the seven Chinese entities were "involved with building supercomputers used by China's military actors, its destabilizing military modernisation efforts, and/or weapons of mass destruction programs." Companies or others listed on the U.S. Entity List are required to apply for licenses from the Commerce Department that face tough scrutiny when they seek permission to receive items from U.S. suppliers.
1d ago
Bloomberg
China’s Very Bad Bank: Inside the Huarong Debt Debacle
(Bloomberg) -- It’s been 11 weeks since Lai Xiaomin, the man once known as the God of Wealth, was executed on a cold Friday morning in the Chinese city of Tianjin.But his shadow still hangs over one of the most dramatic corruption stories ever to come out of China – a tale that has now set nerves on edge around the financial world.At its center is China Huarong Asset Management Co., the state financial company that Lai lorded over until getting ensnared in a sweeping crackdown on corruption by China’s leader, Xi Jinping.From Hong Kong to London to New York, questions burn. Will the Chinese government stand behind $23.2 billion that Lai borrowed on overseas markets -- or will international bond investors have to swallow losses? Are key state-owned enterprises like Huarong still too big to fail, as global finance has long assumed – or will these companies be allowed to stumble, just like anyone else?The answers will have huge implications for China and markets across Asia. Should Huarong fail to pay back its debts in full, the development would cast doubt over a core tenet of Chinese investment: the assumed government backing for important state-owned enterprises, or SOEs.“A default at a central state-owned company like Huarong is unprecedented,” said Owen Gallimore, head of credit strategy at Australia & New Zealand Banking Group. Should one occur, he said, it would mark “a watershed moment” for Chinese and Asian credit markets.Not since the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s has the issue weighed so heavily. Huarong bonds -- among the most widely held SOE debt worldwide -- recently fell to a record low of about 52 cents on the dollar. That’s not the pennies on a dollar normally associated with deeply troubled companies elsewhere, but it’s practically unheard of for an SOE.Time is short. All told, Huarong owes bondholders at home and abroad the equivalent of $42 billion. Some $17.1 billion of that falls due by the end of 2022, according to Bloomberg-compiled data.It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Huarong was created in the aftermath of the ‘90s Asian collapse to avert another crisis, not cause one. The idea was to contain a swelling wave of bad loans threatening Chinese banks. Huarong was to serve as a “bad bank,” a safe repository for the billions in souring loans made to state companies.Along with three other bad banks, Huarong swapped delinquent debts for stakes in hundreds of big SOEs and, in the process, helped turn around chronic money-losers like the giant China Petroleum & Chemical Corp.After Lai took over in 2012, Huarong reached for more, pushing into investment banking, trusts, real estate and positioning itself as a key player in China’s $54 trillion financial industry.Before long, global banks came knocking. In 2013, for instance, Shane Zhang, co-head of Asia-Pacific investment banking at Morgan Stanley, met with Lai. Zhang said his company was “very optimistic” about the future of Huarong, according to a statement posted on Huarong’s website at the time.Before Huarong went public in Hong Kong in 2015, it sold a $2.4 billion stake to a group of investors including Warburg Pincus, Goldman Sachs Group Inc., and Malaysia’s sovereign wealth fund. BlackRock Inc. and Vanguard Group acquired lots of stock too, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The stock has collapsed 67% since its listing.Lai had no trouble financing his grand ambitions. A big reason: Everyone thought Beijing would always stand behind a key company like Huarong. It easily borrowed money in the offshore market at rates as low as 2.1%. It borrowed still more in the domestic interbank market. Along the way Lai transformed Huarong into a powerful shadow lender, extending credit to companies that banks turned away.The truth was darker. Lai, a former senior official at the nation’s banking regulator, doled out loans with little oversight from his board or risk management committee.One Huarong credit officer said Lai personally called the shots on most of the offshore corporate loans underwritten by her division.Money also flowed to projects disguised as parts of China’s push to build railroads, ports and more around the world – the so-called Belt and Road Initiative, according to an executive at a state bank. Huarong didn’t immediately reply to questions on its lending practices.Given Lai’s fate, both people spoke on the condition of anonymity.Huarong snapped up more than half of the 510 billion yuan in distressed debts disposed of by Chinese banks in 2016. At its peak, Lai’s sprawling empire had almost 200 units at home and abroad. He boasted in 2017 that Huarong, having reached the Hong Kong stock exchange, would soon go public in mainland China, too.The IPO never happened. Lai was arrested in 2018 and subsequently confessed to a range of economic crimes in a state TV show. He spoke of trunk-loads of cash being spirited into a Beijing apartment he’d dubbed “the supermarket.” Authorities said they discovered 200 million yuan there. Expensive real estate, luxury watches, art, gold – the list of Lai’s treasure ran on.This past January, Lai was found guilty by the Secondary Intermediate People’s Court in Tianjin of accepting of $277 million in bribes between 2008 and 2018. He was put to death three weeks later – a rare use of capital punishment for economic crimes. Some took the execution as a message from China’s leader, Xi Jinping: my crackdown on corruption will roll on.At Huarong, the bottom has fallen out. Net income plummeted 95% from 2017 to 2019, to 1.4 billion yuan, and then sank 92% during the first half of 2020. Assets have shriveled by 165 billion yuan.The company on April 1 announced that it would delay its 2020 results, saying its auditor needed more time. The influential Caixin magazine this week openly speculated about Huarong’s fate, including the possibility of bankruptcy.According to people familiar with the matter, Huarong has proposed a sweeping restructuring. The plan would involve offloading its money-losing, non-core businesses. Huarong is still trying to get a handle on what those businesses might be worth. The proposal, which the government would have to approve, helps explain why the company delayed its 2020 results, the people said.Company executives have been meeting with peers at state banks to assuage their concerns over the past two weeks, a Huarong official said.The Chinese finance ministry has raised another possibility: transferring its stake in Huarong to a unit of the nation’s sovereign wealth fund that could then sort out the assorted debt problems. Regulators have held several meetings to discuss the company’s plight, according to people familiar with the matter.In an emailed response to questions from Bloomberg, Huarong said it has “adequate liquidity” and plans to announce the expected date of its 2020 earnings release after consulting with auditors. China’s banking and insurance regulator didn’t immediately respond to a request seeking comment on Huarong’s situation.One thing is sure: Huarong is part of a much bigger problem in China. State-owned enterprises are shouldering the equivalent of $4.1 trillion in debt, and a growing number of them are struggling to keep current with creditors. In all, SOEs reneged on a record 79.5 billion yuan of local bonds in 2020, lifting their share of onshore payment failures to 57% from just 8.5% a year earlier, according to Fitch Ratings. The figure jumped to 72% in the first quarter of 2021.The shockwaves from Huarong and these broader debt problems have only begun to reverberate through Chinese finance. Dismantling all or part of Lai’s old empire would show Beijing is willing to accept short-term pain to instill financial discipline among state-owned enterprises.The irony is that Huarong was supposed to fix China’s big debt problem, not cause a new one.“Allowing a state-owned financial institution that undertook the task of resolving troubles of China’s financial system to fail is the worst way to handle risks,” said Feng Jianlin, a Beijing-based chief analyst at research institute FOST. “The authorities must consider the massive risk spillover effects.”For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2021 Bloomberg L.P.
3h ago

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Bitcoin Analysts Set Sights on $70K (Even $80K) After All-Time High

Red Lights Flashing in Credit Markets as Huarong Concern Grows

Stock market news live updates: Stocks end mixed after bank earnings, Coinbase falls below debut price

Gold falls as firmer bond yields dull appeal

Why Coinbase is a 'must-own' stock poised to hit $600: analyst

Taiwan says its chip firms will adhere to new U.S. rules blacklisting China supercomputing entities

China’s Very Bad Bank: Inside the Huarong Debt Debacle