民生银行的大股东包袱
有很多理由让人对中国民生银行(China Minsheng Bank)的前景感到悲观。
Some of them are fundamental, the sort of universal issues that portend weakness and therefore downside risk for investors. Crucially for the bank, there is a complex mix of finance and politics, given that several of Minsheng’s large shareholders have fallen foul of China’s crackdown on companies that have borrowed large amounts of money to finance a wave of foreign investments.
一部分理由是基本面上的，民生银行存在那种预示着疲弱前景、因而将使投资者面临股价下跌风险的一般性问题。最要紧的是，民生银行还面临一个牵扯到财务和政治两方面的复杂问题：中国正对一些通过大举借贷接二连三地投资海外的公司发起打击行动，而民生银行的若干大股东就撞到了枪口上。
The likes of Anbang Insurance, Fosun, Dalian Wanda and HNA Group have infuriated regulators with their lack of financial prudence, their excess borrowing, and their investments abroad at a time when authorities are trying to limit capital outflows. Unfortunately for Minsheng, it has close ties with two of the four companies that are targeted: Anbang and Fosun.
安邦保险(Anbang Insurance)、复星(Fosun)、大连万达(Dalian Wanda)和海航集团(HNA Group)等公司因缺乏财务审慎、过度举债，并且在当局竭力限制资本外流时还投资海外，激怒了监管机构。不幸的是，民生银行与这四家被监管机构当作目标的公司中的两家关系密切，就是安邦和复星。
For investors like Wang Qiang, the chief investment officer of Pinpoint Asset Management in Shanghai, Minsheng has become a proxy for Beijing’s war against several privately owned enterprises that have flouted its wishes.
对于像上海保银投资管理有限公司(Pinpoint Asset Management)首席投资官王强这样的投资人来说，在北京打击数家无视其愿望的私人企业的行动中，民生银行跟着遭受了池鱼之殃。
That is why one of his favourite trades involves buying China Merchants Bank, another joint stock bank, while selling Minsheng. Indeed, while shares in Minsheng have dropped nearly 4 per cent this year, those of China Merchants Bank have surged 46 per cent.
所以他现在最喜欢做的交易之一是买进另一家股份制银行招商银行(China Merchants Bank)的股票，同时卖出民生银行股票。事实上，今年以来，民生银行股价跌了将近4%，而招商银行股价则大涨了46%。
As one of China’s second tier joint stock banks, as opposed to the Big Four state-owned banks such as ICBC, Minsheng looks vulnerable on both financial and political counts, given its parentage, which today has potentially become its biggest liability.
作为中国第二梯队的股份制银行——相对于工行等“四大”国有银行来讲——之一，民生银行无论在财务上还是在政治方面都显得脆弱，“家世”很可能已成为它最大的包袱。
Four units of Anbang, the insurer founded by Wu Xiao Hui, who has been detained by the authorities in Beijing, are among the bank’s largest shareholders, and control over 15.5 per cent of the shares, its first quarter report states. Meanwhile Yao Dafeng, a director and vice-president of the Anbang parent, Anbang Insurance Group, has been a non-executive director of Minsheng since 2014, according to the 2016 annual report.
根据民生银行今年第一季度的财报，三家安邦系公司位居该行前十大股东之列，合计持有逾15.5%股份。另外，根据民生银行2016年财报，安邦保险集团董事、副总经理姚大锋自2014年起一直担任该行非执行董事。安邦保险集团的创始人吴小晖不久前在北京被有关部门带走。
At the same time, a second of the gang of four firms, Fosun was a big shareholder as well, holding 11.6 per cent of the Hong Kong-listed shares of Minsheng until earlier this year, and its founder Guo Guangchang sat on the board. Fosun now holds about 1.5 per cent of the Hong Kong-listed shares in Minsheng.
复星也曾是民生银行的大股东之一，在今年早些时候还持有该行H股的11.6%，创始人郭广昌也曾是该行董事。目前复星大约持有民生银行H股的1.5%。
Anbang’s shares are of concern and the prospect of a forced sale of those shares is one reason they have underperformed relative to their peers. What the fate of companies like Anbang will be and what will happen with their extensive assets both at home and abroad is unclear. Today, Anbang is under the close scrutiny of the China Insurance Regulatory Commission, which is considering what to do about the insurer’s assets such as its stake in Minsheng, according to several people familiar with the situation.
安邦持有的民生股份受到关注，那些股份可能被迫出售，这是民生银行跑输同类股票的一个原因。像安邦这样的公司会有什么样的命运、它们在海内外的众多资产会发生什么变数，目前不得而知。如今中国保监会(CIRC)正在紧盯着安邦，一些知情人士透露，保监会正在考虑要怎么处理该保险集团的资产，比如它在民生银行持有的股份。
Minsheng declined to comment on investor worries or about any recent changes in its shareholding.
民生银行拒绝就投资者顾虑的问题或近期其股权结构的变更发表评论。
If the bank’s fundamentals were better, all this would not matter much. But Minsheng’s fundamentals are less solid than those of almost all of its counterparts. “We think the bank’s current valuation can’t be justified given its weak capital position, vulnerable liquidity profile and large shadow banking book which is increasingly at risk with regulatory crackdowns,” note analysts at Sanford C Bernstein in Hong Kong.
如果该行基本面较好的话，这一切就问题不大。但民生银行的基本面比几乎所有同类银行都不稳健。“鉴于其薄弱的资本状况、脆弱的流动性和庞大的影子银行业务——这类业务在监管层打击下日益处于风险之中——我们认为该行目前的估值是不合理的。”桑福德伯恩斯坦公司(Sanford C. Bernstein)的香港分析师们表示。
Virtually all the major Chinese banks have plenty of deposits and are therefore relatively less sensitive to the periodic jitters that make shares on the mainland inherently unstable. However, here Minsheng is an outlier — it depends on the wholesale market for 30 per cent of its funding. That is never a good thing, but in China where regulators have been steadily raising the cost of interbank funding it is especially bad, and increasingly expensive.
几乎所有大型中资银行都吸收了大量存款，因此它们对于导致A股内在不稳定性的周期性波动不太敏感。然而，在这方面民生银行是个异数，它有三成融资依靠批发市场获得。这从来就不是一件好事，考虑到中国监管机构一直在稳步地提高银行同业融资的成本，这一点尤其糟糕，而且成本越来越高。
Moreover Minsheng is particularly involved in shadow banking transactions. Today regulators are forcing such products into the sunshine of the loan book from the murkier investment receivables category, forcing Minsheng and others like it to set aside more capital for these exposures.
此外，民生银行还大量涉足影子银行交易。目前监管机构正强制银行将此类产品从“应收款项类投资”这种较不透明的项目下转移到一目了然的贷款账簿，这迫使民生银行等要对这些敞口拨备更多资本。
“Minsheng is the only major bank not owned by the government or a state-owned enterprise.” says Matthew Phan an analyst with research house CreditSights. By contrast, China Merchants has far stronger capital and liquidity, he adds. To invest in a bank that maintains close ties to the government and state-owned enterprises and has an impressive management and strategy such as Merchants seems increasingly the prudent thing to do.
“民生是唯一非政府或国企所有的大型银行，”研究机构CreditSights的分析师Matthew Phan说道。他还说，相比之下，招商银行的资本和流动性都要强得多。投资像招行这样与政府和国企保持着密切关系、有着出色管理层和发展战略的银行越发显得是谨慎之举。
