International Law

CITIC Pacific Loses $1.89 Billion in Bad Betting on Currency

CITIC Pacific, whose parent company recently offered to raise its equity stake in Morgan Stanley to 49% from 10%, has announced the loss of US$1.89 billion (and possibly $2 billion) in currency trading. Trading of the shares was suspended for one day (October 20) on the Hong Kong exchange.

``The incident shows the company has problems in its internal control as it's too big a potential forex loss,'' Kenny Tang, a director of Tung Tai Securities Co., said in Hong Kong. ``The company won't get bankrupted because of its state-owned background but the stock may fall at least 10 percent tomorrow.''

Here again we see the general belief that state-owned Chinese financial institutions are invincible. I well remember bankers telling me that no Chinese bank would ever fail in China because ?????????????? (The government will absolutely never let a bank go under.)

Unless, of course, the loss is great enough. How great? Who knows? We've already seen slight of hand applied to a bankrupt Chinese financial sector, theoretically taking bad loans off the books and allowing major insolvent institutions to list on world exchanges, as if they were pure as the driven snow. The American house of cards has fallen and the bailout's success is not readily apparent. And the Chinese?

Full post as published by Asia Business Intelligence on October 20, 2008 (boomark / email).