Icbccss&p500usd Discussion Threads

[briarberry] 13/4/2010 09:06

April 13 (Bloomberg) -- China's four largest publicly traded banks need 480 billion yuan ($70 billion) of capital to comply with regulatory requirements for financial strength, according to Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd.

ICBC, China Construction Bank Corp., Bank of China Ltd. and Bank of Communications Ltd. must maintain a capital adequacy ratio of at least 11.5 percent even as they grow loans by an estimated 15 trillion yuan in the next five years, ICBC President Yang Kaisheng wrote in an article published in the 21st Century Business Herald today.

Yang's estimate is more than four times the amount ICBC, Bank of China and BoCom have said they plan to raise so far this year. Banks needs to restore capital after extending a record 9.59 trillion yuan in loans last year to fuel a recovery in the world's third-largest economy.

[briarberry] 12/4/2010 15:57

China Real Estate Is Overheated, Nomura Asset Says

China housing prices will increase 11.4 percent in March, according to a Bloomberg survey. The monthly data is due to be released this week.

Shanghai and Beijing are among the cities that are affected by so-called "hot money" and speculation

[knowing] 09/4/2010 10:25

Fidelity China Special Raised GBP460 Million, Sees Admission April 19
LONDON (Dow Jones)

Fidelity China Special Situations said Friday that monies totalling GBP460 million before costs and expenses have been raised pursuant to the issue, and has received applications for in aggregate 331,863,187 shares under the offer for subscription, and 128,136,813 shares under the placing.

MAIN FACTS:

-It is expected that admission will become effective and dealings in the shares will commence on the London Stock Exchange on April 19.

-Conditional upon receipt of cleared funds, the number of issued shares and total voting rights in the Company immediately following Admission will be 460 million.

[briarberry] 07/4/2010 12:43

April 7 (Bloomberg) -- China's central bank will sell three-year bills tomorrow for the first time since June 2008, seeking to drain cash from the world's fastest-growing economy, traders at three of the nation's largest banks said.
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Selling higher-yielding bills may be a precursor to the first increase in benchmark lending rates in more than two years and allowing yuan gains, said Jiang Chao, an analyst at Guotai Junan Securities Co., the nation's largest brokerage by revenue. Policy makers from China to India have begun withdrawing economic stimulus this year, seeking to prevent asset-price bubbles as Asia leads the recovery from a global recession
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The People's Bank is targeting a drop of 22 percent in new lending this year from 2009's record 9.59 trillion yuan ($1.4 trillion) and has told banks twice this year to set aside more cash as reserves. India increased interest rates last month for the first time in almost two years. Australia's central bank has raised borrowing costs in five out of the past six meetings.

[briarberry] 12/3/2010 23:16

China has hit back at comments by US President Barack Obama that Beijing should change its currency strategy.

On Thursday, he urged China to adopt a "market-oriented" exchange rate policy, increasing the pressure on Beijing to allow the yuan to appreciate.

But Su Ning, vice governor of the People's Bank of China, accused Mr Obama of "politicising" the yuan issue.

[energyi] 24/2/2010 15:10

Nowhere is the property madness more apparent than in the country's major cities. In Beijing, according to Centaline China Property Research, high-end residential property sales -- measured by floor space sold -- accounted for one-forth of all transactions in September, compared with just under 10% only a few months earlier in March. Much of this is being driven by speculation that prices will continue to rise. A real estate agent in the Lujiazui area of Shanghai's desirable Pudong district, told the national paper, 21st Century Business Herald, he reckons over 40% of people buying property there are doing so for investment-income purposes and a recent report estimated that 70% of residential property buyers in Shanghai are not based in the city.

Where is all the money coming from? Although foreigners have in the past been accused of driving up the country's property prices, today's surging demand -- at least in the high end -- is coming primarily from the Chinese, according to global real estate adviser DTZ. Of the 32 apartments valued at more than $10 million that were sold in China between January and mid-September, more than 84% were bought by Chinese locals.

Sources of Heat

Experts concur that the main short-term reason for the feverish growth in Chinese property markets is the excessive easing of credit. As China turned to its banks to fund much of its stimulus programme, nearly RMB 10 trillion of loans were extended in the year to October, representing 150% more than the previous year.

A sizable portion of new lending has found its way into real estate. Total financing for all real estate developers grew some 43% in the first 10 months of the year, to RMB 4.4 trillion. Mortgage lending jumped by a spectacular 120%, to more than RMB 616 billion, and lending to property developers rose by 50% to just over RMB 911 billion.

Yet China's property market raises other, more fundamental concerns. One of them has to do with the land on which the property is being built. Economist Zhou Tianyong, deputy director of research at the Central Communist Party School, said in an interview published on December 3 in Economic Observer, a weekly Beijing newspaper, that soaring property prices are the result of the monopolistic way public land is auctioned.

Land in China is sold by local governments, which rely heavily on the proceeds to meet their funding needs. Land sales in the municipality of Beijing in 2009, for instance, have contributed to about one-third of its revenues. This means local governments have a vested interest in restricting the supply of land available to developers and hoping that prices stay high. The Shanghai residential developer says that developers' payments to the government (including the cost of land, tax and various fees) add between 60% and 65% to the price of a property.

With the rekindling of property developers' demand, land prices have been rising. According to Centaline, in the first 10 months of 2009, revenue from land sales in each of China's 10 biggest cities exceeded that of the same period in 2008. The total was even greater than for all of 2007, a year considered the most frenetic on record for China's property market.

By late September, Shanghai's government earned RMB 52.6 billion through these auctions, which included residential land sales of RMB 30 billion, the highest amount nationwide. By the end of the third quarter, land sales in Beijing, meanwhile, had already surpassed those in the whole of 2008. In last October alone,337 land auctions in 60 cities took place, 29 of which coming in at more than double their initial asking prices.

Zhou Jian Cheng, a researcher specialising in real estate at E-House Research Institute, a non-governmental organization in Shanghai, explains that returns on property investment are much higher than in other industries. That makes it hard for even disciplined retail investors to exert caution and resist investing in real estate even as a bubble reaches bursting point.

/more:

[briarberry] 13/2/2010 17:11

official inflation figures....


The National Bureau of Statistics of China said Thursday that annual inflation in producer prices had more than doubled in January from December, to 4.3 percent. Average housing prices in large and midsize cities were up 9.5 percent last month from a year earlier, the fastest rate of increase in 19 months.

Rising producer prices and asset prices have not yet fed into high inflation in consumer prices, which were up only 1.5 percent last month from a year earlier despite an increase in food prices.

[briarberry] 12/2/2010 15:47

China lifts banks' reserve ratio by half point

In a surprise move late Friday, China's central bank increased the amount of funds banks must set aside as reserves, the second such move this year.

[briarberry] 10/2/2010 15:43

Imports climbed a record 85.5 percent from a year before


Feb. 10 (Bloomberg) -- China's imports climbed for a third straight month in January, signaling increasing strength in domestic demand that's aiding the global economic rebound.

Imports climbed a record 85.5 percent from a year before, a jump that was influenced by a shift in the lunar new year holiday to February this year from January 2009, customs bureau figures showed in Beijing today. Exports rose 21 percent in a second monthly advance after 13 declines that may reinforce overseas calls for China to allow a stronger currency.
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after the government loosed an unprecedented expansion in credit to counter the effects of the financial crisis.

[briarberry] 02/2/2010 12:00

They pointed out on FSN this weekend that its difficult for China to tighten while the Yuan is pegged to the US$

[contrarian2investor] 01/2/2010 20:46

Hi all,

Do any of you chartists have a view?

Shanghai Market Breaks 200 DMA: Buying Opportunity or Trend Indicator? 18 comments
by: Prieur du Plessis January 31, 2010 | about: FXI / FXP



c2i

[briarberry] 01/2/2010 14:36

Feb. 1 (Bloomberg) -- China, the world's third-biggest economy, sustained its manufacturing expansion in January as export orders jumped and inflation pressures grew, two surveys showed today.

A purchasing managers' index released by HSBC Holdings Plc and Markit Economics rose to a record. A second survey, by the Federation of Logistics and Purchasing, recorded the second- fastest growth since 2008. India reported an acceleration of manufacturing today and Australia posted an expansion.

Asian stocks tumbled as China's reports spurred concern that the government will have to escalate efforts to rein in the credit growth that has fueled the nation's infrastructure spending surge...



Stoking concerns on the inflation front, the Federation's PMI showed the input price level at 68.5, rising from 66.7 in December.

[briarberry] 17/1/2010 21:53

China's tweaks won't cure financial excess

[energyi] 08/1/2010 01:16

Thnx for those articles, briarberry

[briarberry] 07/1/2010 15:35

Chinese central bank sends 'tightening signal'

China's central bank moves to guide interbank interest rates higher, the latest in a series of actions that analysts say indicate a "tightening bias" and could lay the groundwork for an eventual rate hike.

[briarberry] 03/1/2010 13:35

China Property Bubble May Lead to U.S.-Style Real Estate Slump

Millions of Chinese are pursuing property with a zeal once typical of house-happy Americans. Some Chinese are plunking down wads of cash for homes. Others are taking out mortgages at record levels. Developers are snapping up land for luxury high- rises and villas, and the banks are eagerly funding them. Some local officials are even building towns from scratch in the desert, certain that demand won't flag. And if families can swing it, they buy two apartments: one to live in, one to flip when prices jump further.

And jump they have. In Shanghai, prices for high-end real estate were up 54 percent through September, to $500 per square foot. In November alone, housing prices in 70 major cities rose 5.7 percent, while housing starts nationwide rose a staggering 194 percent. The real estate rush is fueling fears of a bubble that could burst later in 2010, devastating homeowners, banks, developers, stock markets, and local governments.

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How did this bubble get going? Low interest rates, official encouragement of bank lending, and then Beijing's half-trillion- dollar stimulus plan all made funds readily available. City and provincial governments have been gladly cooperating with developers: Economists estimate that half of all local government revenue comes from selling state-owned land.
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The government is reluctant to crack down too hard because construction, steel, cement, furniture, and other sectors are directly tied to growth in real estate. In November, for example, retail sales of furniture and construction materials jumped more than 40 percent.