Emerging market fund managers have started buying back into China’s largest banks, despite fears of rising bad loans, off-balance sheet lending to the shadow banking sector and a jump in interbank lending rates to a two-year high.
新兴市场基金经理已开始重新买入中国大型银行股，尽管如下几点仍令人担忧：不断增加的不良贷款、流向银子银行部门的表外放贷以及银行间同业拆放利率升至两年高位。
Chinese financial stocks have fallen dramatically out of favour since 2011, with the vast majority of emerging market equity funds holding sizeable underweight positions in the sector or shunning it full stop.自2011年以来，中国金融股急剧失宠，绝大多数新兴市场股票基金对中国金融股大幅低配，或者完全空仓。However, fund managers have turned net buyers of China’s four large state-controlled banks since last summer even as China’s central bank and regulators have sought to drain cash from the banking sector after years of runaway debt growth.然而，自去年夏季以来，基金经理已成为中国四大国有银行的净买入方，即便中国央行和监管机构同期一直试图在多年的债务增长失控之后将资金抽离银行部门。“The economic cycle has improved and therefore the cash flow generation of corporate China has improved so, at the margin, we can feel more confident about the banks’ asset quality,” said Charlie Awdry, manager of Henderson Global Investors’ China Opportunities fund, who has just ended an 18-month long boycott of Chinese bank stocks.管理着亨德森全球投资(Henderson Global Investors)旗下远见中国跃升基金(China Opportunities)的基金经理查理?奥德里(Charlie Awdry)表示：“经济周期已经改善，因而中国企业产生现金流的能力有所提高，所以，从边际角度考虑，我们可以对这些银行的资产质量更有信心。”奥德里刚刚解除了对中国银行股为期18个月的买入冻结。“People have mentally written off the banks as investments. Expectations are at rock bottom, [but] people are going to start to realise that their expectations for the banks are so low, any improvement can be an incremental positive.”“人们心里已将银行股视为打了水漂的投资。期望值已低到不能再低，（但）人们会开始意识到，他们对这些银行的期望值已低到任何改善都可以成为利好的地步。”JP Smith, a partner at Ecstrat, an investment consultancy, added: “[Chinese banks] were the biggest single underweighting of emerging market funds. If you believe the economy will be fairly stable for the next six months it’s a fairly rational thing to do to up your weighting.”投资咨询公司Ecstrat的合伙人J?P?史密斯(JP Smith)补充说：“（中资银行）是新兴市场基金低配幅度最大的资产类别。如果你认为未来6个月中国经济将还算稳定，那么提高配置权重是比较合理的。”However, the bearish Mr Smith described this as “picking up nickels in front of a steamroller”. “I can understand why people are doing it, but I think they are taking a huge risk,” he added.然而，看空的史密斯把这形容为“在压路机前捡硬币”。“我能理解人们为什么这样做，但我认为他们在冒巨大风险，”他补充说。At the end of March, 42.7 per cent of the 126 emerging market funds, with combined assets of $265bn, monitored by Copley Fund Research held stakes in China Construction Bank, up from a low of 38.2 per cent at the end of June 2016 and partially reversing a long downward trend.在科普利基金研究(Copley Fund Research)监测的合计资产管理规模达2650亿美元的126只新兴市场基金中，持仓中国建设银行(CCB)的基金比重从2016年6月末的低点38.2%上升到了今年3月末的42.7%，部分扭转了长期的下滑趋势。Over the same period, the proportion of funds holding stock in Industrial and Commercial Bank of China rose from 30.1 per cent to 33.1 per cent, those holding Bank of China rose from 22 per cent to 25 per cent and the proportion with positions in Agricultural Bank of China increased from 14.6 per cent to 16.1 per cent, as the first chart shows.同一时期，持仓中国工商银行(ICBC)的基金比重从30.1%上升至33.1%，持仓中国银行(BoC)的基金比重从22%上升至25%，持仓中国农业银行(ABC)的比重从14.6%上升到16.1%（如图所示）。The proportion of funds with an overweight position in each of these state-controlled banks has also risen since June 2016, from 26 per cent to 33.9 per cent at CCB, 18.7 per cent to 22.6 per cent at ICBC, 13.8 per cent to 16.9 per cent at BoC and 10.6 per cent to 12.1 per cent at ABC, as depicted in the second chart.高配这些国有银行的基金的比重自2016年6月以来也有所上升——建行从26%升至33.9%，工行从18.7%升至22.6%，中行从13.8%到16.9%，农行从10.6%升至12.1%。To some extent, the partial recovery in funds’ appetite for large Chinese banks reflects a broader trend, with the average emerging market fund now having a 25.5 per cent allocation to financial stocks, just 1.1 percentage points below the sector’s weight in the MSCI EM index, the smallest underweight since Copley began collating data in 2011.基金对中国大型银行股买入意愿的部分复苏，在某种程度上反映了一种更广泛的趋势：如今，新兴市场基金对金融股的平均配置权重为25.5%，仅比该板块在MSCI明晟新兴市场指数(MSCI EM index)中的比重低1.1个百分点，低配幅度是自科普利自2011年开始编纂数据以来最小的。In the wake of an inflection point in November 2016, Steven Holden, founder of Copley, believes much of the buying has been driven by a global “reflation” trade off the back of the election of Donald Trump to the US presidency.科普利创始人史蒂文?霍尔登(Steven Holden)认为，2016年11月的拐点之后，大部分买入是由基于唐纳德?特朗普(Donald Trump)当选美国总统的全球“通货再膨胀”交易(“reflation” trade)驱动的。Henderson’s Mr Awdry lists a range of factors that have led him to buy back into two of China’s big four banks, CCB and BoC, and may well have influenced others.亨德森全球投资的奥德里列出了一系列促使他重新投资建行和中行的因素，这些因素很可能也影响了其他基金经理。First, given the preponderance of state-owned enterprises in the Chinese economy, he argues that a key weakness of the country’s corporate sector is that it does not allocate capital well, and therefore “asset quality is poor”.首先，鉴于国有企业在中国经济中的优势地位，他认为，中国企业部门的一个主要弱点在于资本配置不当，因此，“资产质量较差”。However, off the back of a directive from the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, Mr Awdry says there are signs that SOEs are starting to improve their capital allocation by increasing dividend payouts. He cites a decision by China Shenhua Energy, the country’s largest coal company, in March to pay a special dividend of Rmb49.9bn ($7.2bn) as an example of this trend.然而，基于中国国有资产监督管理委员会的一条指令，奥德里表示，有迹象表明国有企业正开始通过增加派息来改善资本配置。奥德里援引的反映这一趋势的例子是，中国最大的煤炭企业中国神华(China Shenhua)今年3月决定派发499亿元人民币（合72亿美元）的特别股息。Given that many SOEs are big borrowers from the state banks, Mr Awdry believes this improved financial discipline will make them better credits, improving the quality of banks’ assets.鉴于很多国企都是国有银行的主要借贷人，奥德里认为，这种财务自律性的提高将让国企成为更好的借贷人，从而提高银行的资产质量。Second, he cites the low valuations of the four state banks, which currently trade at between 5.3 and 5.8 times consensus estimate of 2017 earnings, well below the 11.9 times of the wider Hong Kong market.第二，他援引了四大国有银行较低的估值，目前四大行以2017年共识预测盈利计算的市盈率在5.3倍至5.8倍之间，远低于整个香港股市11.9倍的水平。Although Mr Awdry still holds a large position in consumer-orientated stocks such as Tencent, which trades on a multiple of 34.9 times, he argues the valuation gap with the banks has become too extreme.尽管奥德里仍然重仓持有腾讯(Tencent)等面向消费者的股票，但他认为这类股票与银行股之间的估值差距已经太大了。以2017年预测盈利计算，腾讯现在的市盈率为34.9倍。He raised some of the money to buy into the banks by cutting his stake in Jiangsu Yuyue Medical Equipment & Supply, a company he says he still likes but one that trades on 40.6 times 2017 earnings.他通过对江苏鱼跃医疗设备股份有限公司(Jiangsu Yuyue Medical Equipment & Supply)减仓筹措了一些资金，用来购入银行股。他称鱼跃医疗仍然是他很喜欢的个股，但其以2017年盈利计算的市盈率已经到了40.6倍。Mr Awdry, who manages just under $1bn in Chinese stocks, also cited the modest pick-up in China’s economic growth rate and signs that the Trump administration is proving more pragmatic than many expected in its relations with China, as factors behind his renewed optimism for the large banks.奥德里管理的资金有略低于10亿美元配置在中国股票上。他还把如下两点引为促使他对大型银行重拾乐观的因素：中国经济增长率小幅提振，以及有迹象显示特朗普政府对美中关系的态度比许多人预期的更务实。However, he admitted that it was impossible to get an accurate picture of the level of off-balance sheet lending by Chinese banks, arguing that investing in the country, which he has done since 2006, necessarily requires “dealing with uncertainty”.然而，他承认想要得到中国银行业表外放贷水平的准确信息是不可能的，他认为“与不确定性打交道”是投资于中国所无法避免的。自2006年以来，他一直在投资于中国。“It may be that some investors will never feel comfortable with Chinese financial statements. You can always want more information,” he says.他称：“有些投资者可能始终无法适应中国的财务报表。你可能总会想得到更多信息。”Mr Awdry also remains wary of the second-tier city commercial and rural banks, particularly given rising interbank lending rates that he fears will squeeze net interest margins for the second-tier banks that rely on funding from this market, even as they increase margins for the deposit-heavy big four that are net lenders via the interbank market.此外，奥德里仍然对城商行和农商行这些二线银行保持着警惕，特别是在银行间同业拆放利率不断上涨的情况下——他担心不断上涨的银行间同业拆放利率会挤压那些依靠该市场筹措资金的二线银行的净息差。与此同时，不断上涨的银行间同业拆放利率增加四大行的净息差——拥有巨额居民存款的四大行是银行间同业市场的净出借方。Copley’s data suggest this is a widespread view, with fewer than 10 per cent of the funds it tracks holding second-tier banks such as China Minsheng Bank, and even these stakes being of “almost neglible size”, says Mr Holden.
霍尔登称，科普利基金研究的数据表明这是一种普遍观点，在该机构追踪的基金中，持仓中国民生银行等二线银行的比例不足10%，而且持仓规模“几乎可忽略不计”。However, Mr Smith believes even the big four banks carry significant risk, with the disintermediation of China’s financial sector making it hard to get a handle on the size of the contingent liabilities that stem from their distribution of so-called wealth management products, notoriously risky high-yield products that are issued by banks but often kept off balance sheets to elude capital regulations.然而，史密斯认为，即便是四大行也承载着重大风险——中国金融业的非居间化(disintermediation)导致人们很难摸清或有负债的规模，这种负债源自四大行销售所谓的理财产品，这些产品都是出了名的高风险高收益产品，虽然由银行发行，但为了规避资本金监管要求，往往不被放入银行的资产负债表。These WMPs, Rmb29tn ($4.2tn) of which are currently in issuance, equivalent to 40 per cent of GDP, are seen as prime drivers of China’s shadow finance chicanery.这些理财产品被视为中国影子金融把戏的主要推动因素。目前发行中的理财产品总值为29万亿元人民币（合4.2万亿美元），相当于中国国内生产总值(GDP)的40%。