中国中小企业融资新招

Readers of The Big Short will recognise this once-fashionable trick of financial engineering: 1) Take some debt rated triple B, triple B plus and A minus; 2) Bundle it together; 3) Get it rated triple A; 4) Flog it to investors, writes Josh Noble.

《大空头》(The Big Short)的读者会一眼认出这种一度盛行的金融工程学操作手法：1) 选取一些评级为BBB、BBB+和A-的债券；2) 把这些债券打包在一起；3) 把打包后的债券评为AAA级；4) 推销给投资者。

Reports from China suggest that this technique is beginning to catch on among cash-strapped small and medium enterprises.

来自中国的报道显示，这种手法在资金匮乏的中小企业当中很有市常

According to the South China Morning Post, three such companies in Jiangsu province – Changzhou Shende Seamless Tube, Changzhou Dongfeng Agricultural Machinery Group, and TingVoa.com Chang Group – have clubbed together to issue Rmb260m in joint three-year debt.

据《南华早报》(SCMP)报道，中国江苏省的三家公司采用了这种方法：常州盛德无缝钢管有限公司、常州东风农机集团有限公司和新华昌集团有限公司。这三家公司将发行2.6亿元人民币的3年期集合债券。

The three have credit ratings of triple B, triple B plus and A minus, respectively. But, due to support from the local government, their jointly issued bonds are triple A rated. So, is the dreaded collateralised debt obligation, that clever sleight of hand that helped drive the US housing market into the stratosphere, creeping into China?

这三家公司的信用评级分别为BBB、BBB+和A-。但由于得到当地政府的支持，它们所发行集合债券的评级被定为AAA级。这么说，令人畏惧的债务抵押债券(Collateralised Debt Obligations, CDO)——将美国住房市场推上“巅峰的聪明技巧——正在潜入中国吗？

There’s a key difference to the US practice of bundling subprime mortgages and repackaging them: these Chinese bonds are backed by the government, albeit the local kind. So the question for investors isn’t whether the individual companies are triple A rated, it’s whether they think the local government will pay back the debt on their behalf if things go wrong.

但这一做法与美国将一些次级抵押贷款打包并重新包装有一个关键的不同之处：这些集合债券得到了政府的支持，尽管只是地方政府。所以，投资者应关注的问题不是每家公司是否拥有AAA评级，而是一旦形成坏账，当地政府是否会替发行人偿还债务。

Local governments are not without their own debt worries. Last year the national audit office put the LG debt figure at about $1,650bn, while others think it could be much higher.

地方政府在债务方面也有自己的担忧。中国国家审计署(National Audit Office)去年公布的数据显示，地方政府的负债额约为1.65万亿美元，而其他人则认为，实际负债额可能远远高于这个数字。

So would bond investors lending to SMEs, and in turn local governments, be throwing good money after bad? That depends on your view of China’s debt chain. Local governments largely owe money to big state-backed banks, which in turn are tools of the central government.

如此说来，债券投资者借钱给中小企业、进而借钱给地方政府，这是在没完没了地把钱往水里扔吗？这要取决于你如何看待中国的债务链。地方政府的主要债权人是大型国有银行，而国有银行又是中央政府的政策工具。

Many economists believe China’s banks will need some kind of recapitalisation as bad debts surface and non-performing loans rise. If managed correctly, that needn’t be a cause for alarm. At the moment, things don’t look too troubling. NPL ratios are low, and indeed falling.

许多经济学家都认为，随着坏账浮出水面以及不良贷款的增加，中国的银行需要进行某种形式的资本重组。如果处理得当，这无需成为拉响警报的理由。当前，情况看上去并没有那么糟糕。不良贷款率较低，实际上正在下降。

China’s SMEs need cash to keep going – they’ve been frozen out of normal credit channels for months. This method of funding helps spread the credit risks to investors, with a government backstop. So, economically, it is good news. And so long as China’s debt problem looks manageable, there’s no reason to believe that these triple A rated bonds are any different to any others. Investors got their cash back following a “credit event on a similar bond this year.

中国的中小企业需要现金才能维持运转，但它们被冻结在正常信贷渠道之外已有几个月了。这种融资方式相当于是在政府的支持下，将信贷风险分散给投资者。因此，从经济意义上说，这是一个好消息。只要中国的债务问题看起来仍然可控，我们就没有理由认为这些AAA级债券与其他AAA级债券之间存在任何差别。今年，一种类似的债券发生了“信贷事件，不过后来，投资者还是拿回了自己的资金。

But – with China’s economy slowing, and its debt problem essentially impossible to quantify – it may still require a strong stomach to invest.

但是，随着中国经济增长放缓，加上其债务问题基本上无法量化，因此，要想继续投资，可能还需要有一颗强大的内心。