http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-07-03/meet-decheng-mining-chinese-firm-which-rehypothecated-its-metal-least-three-times
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 07/03/2014 14:08 -0400
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 06/04/2014 21:22 -0400
Meet Decheng Mining: The Chinese Firm Which Rehypothecated Its Metal (At Least) Three Times
We have written extensively about the problem surrounding the rehypothecation of "non-existent" Chinese commodities, the bulk of which have been used in some form of Commodity Funding Deal over the last few years: something which various banks have said would be the tipping point that finally launches China's long delayed Minsky Moment. After all, if there is one thing China has taught the west, it is how to kick everything that is broken about one's financial system as far as the eye can see, and then also eliminating any living witnesses just in case. And further, since virtually the entire Chinese financial sector is partially state-owned, it is rather easy for the politburo to reallocate funds from Point A to Point B in order to preserve that all important commodity - confidence.
But for all the theoretical explanations about China's profound commodity rehypothecation problems, the one thing that was missing was an empirical case study framing just how substantial the problem is. After all, it is one thing to say banks expect "X millions in losses", but totally different to see the rehypothecation dominoes falling in practice.
Today, courtesy of Bloomberg we got just such an example.
Meet Decheng Mining.
Decheng is a well-known name to those who follow developments in China's murky shadow banking system. It is the company which was sued by China's Shanxi Coal International Energy Group a week ago over missed payments. As Reuters reported at the time, "Shanxi Coal said in a statement to the Shanghai Stock Exchange it was suing six clients over a total of more than $177 million in missed payments. Of that total, $120.4 million of overdue payments were in dollars, plus a further 352.5 million yuan ($56.77 million)."
Sadly, that was as far as Shanxi Coal went - it did not specify how much it was owed by Decheng Mining and its parent company, Dezheng Resources. Arguably because the last thing Shanxi wanted was to spook some of its own vendors and creditors, especially as Chinese coal prices fell to record lows over the past week exacerbating the plight of the local coal industry.
Yet one reason why Decheng's sudden insolvency did not come as a surprise is that it was one of the main companies investigated by Chinese authorities over precisely the rehypothecation scandal that was engulfed China's third largest port, Qingdao, having been accused of obtaining multiple loans secured against a single cargo of metal.
As of today we know exactly why Decheng was unable to pay its bills.
As Bloomberg reports, Decheng Mining pledged the same metals stockpile three times over to obtain more than 2.7 billion yuan ($435 million) of loans in China’s Qingdao port,a person briefed on the matter said, citing preliminary findings of an official investigation.
From Bloomberg:
Local authorities are checking metal inventories worth about 1.54 billion yuan including 194,000 tons of alumina, 62,000 tons of aluminum and some copper, the person said, asking not to be identified as he isn’t authorized to speak publicly. Two calls to Decheng Mining, a metals trading house based in Qingdao, went unanswered.Foreign and local banks are examining lending linked to metals at Qingdao amid concern that risks are more widespread in China, where traders use commodities from iron ore to rubber to get funding. Steps by the Chinese government to rein in credit raised companies’ borrowing costs in recent years and triggered a surge in commodities financing deals that Goldman Sachs Group Inc. estimates to be worth as much as $160 billion.“The whole Qingdao probe will just keep fermenting, inevitably leading to banks increasing their scrutiny of commodities-backed financing activities,” Fu Peng, chief strategist at Galaxy Futures Co., said by phone from Beijing.Bank of China Ltd., Export-Import Bank of China, China Minsheng Banking Corp. and 15 other Chinese banks have lent a total of about 14.8 billion yuan to Chen Jihong, Decheng Mining’s owner, and his companies, the person said.
Well that is a little over $2 billion that the lenders will never recover as the money has almost certainly been (re-re-) used to purchase commodities which were then repledged countless times in order to generate the arb we first described in May of 2013.
Chen, a Singaporean national, has been detained and the city-state’s foreign ministry is providing consular assistance to him and his family, the ministry said June 11. He is also involved in a separate inquiry in northwestern Gansu province, two bankers assisting with the probe told Bloomberg last month.The collateral ratio for loans to Dezheng Group, Decheng Mining’s parent, was 55 percent as of June 13, Minsheng Bank said in a text message in response to questions last month. That means for every 100 yuan of collateral offered by the borrowers, 55 yuan was given in loans.
Unfortunately for Minsheng, that number is a clear fabrication considering the real collateral to loan ratio is more like 300%.
Press officers at Bank of China and Minsheng Bank based in Beijing declined to comment, while spokesmen for Export-Import Bank weren’t immediately available.Local government officials are updating creditors about the probe on a weekly basis, with the latest meeting held on July 1, the person said.Lenders are tightening their commodity financing criteria in the wake of the probe. Some Chinese banks have raised margins for letters of credit for iron-ore financing to 30-to-50 percent from 15-to-30 percent previously, people familiar with the matter said June 10. Others reduced overall credit available for iron-ore financing and have set up a cap on credit used in some locations, the people said.
As for the punchline, we hardly doubt we need to note it: if one trader effectively managed to "evaporate" half a billion in collateral and three times as many derivative loans, what does that mean for the entire Chinese rehypothecation industry? And keep in mind this is China - what is presented for public consumption is without doubt far better than what has really happened.
Recall from our CFD flowchartexplanation a year ago, that the practical rehypothecation limit is, well, non-existent.
Step 1) offshore trader A sells warrant of bonded copper (copper in China’s bonded warehouse that is exempted from VAT payment before customs declaration) or inbound copper (i.e. copper on ship in transit to bonded) to onshore party B at price X (i.e. B imports copper from A), and A is paid USD LC, issued by onshore bank D. The LC issuance is a key step that SAFE’s new policies target.Step 2) onshore entity B sells and re-exports the copper by sending the warrant documentation (not the physical copper which stays in bonded warehouse ‘offshore’) to the offshore subsidiary C (N.B. B owns C), and C pays B USD or CNH cash (CNH = offshore CNY). Using the cash from C, B gets bank D to convert the USD or CNH into onshore CNY, and trader B can then use CNY as it sees fit.The conversion of the USD or CNH into onshore CNY is another key step that SAFE’s new policies target. This conversion was previously allowed by SAFE because it was expected that the re-export process was a trade-related activity through China’s current account. Now that it has become apparent that CCFDs and other similar deals do not involve actual shipments of physical material, SAFE appears to be moving to halt them.Step 3) Offshore subsidiary C sells the warrant back to A (again, no move in physical copper which stays in bonded warehouse ‘offshore’), and A pays C USD or CNH cash with a price of X minus $10-20/t, i.e. a discount to the price sold by A to B in Step 1.Step 4) Repeat Step 1-Step 3 as many times as possible, during the period of LC (usually 6 months, with range of 3-12 months). This could be 10-30 times over the course of the 6 month LC, with the limitation being the amount of time it takes to clear the paperwork. In this way, the total notional LCs issued over a particular tonne of bonded or inbound copper over the course of a year would be 10-30 times the value of the physical copper involved, depending on the LC duration.
Get that? A rehypothecation limit upward of 15x and as much as 30x. Now imaging the millions of tons of copper, aluminum and various other funding metals just sitting there, and collateralizing some 30 times their notional value in loans.
Surely this explains why foreign banks operating in China are starting to sweat profusely, especially since not only Qingdao, but a second port, Penglai, has now been implicated. From the WSJ:
Local authorities in Qingdao, and Penglai, another port city also in Shandong province, have been investigating whether the metals have been reused several times as collateral by traders and companies seeking funding.Already, a major state-owned enterprise, Citic Resources Holdings Ltd. , said some metals that it has stored at the Qingdao port can't be located.But because banks can't get access to the storage facilities at Dagang in Qingdao and Penglai port where the probes are under way, the scale of any possible losses can't be tallied up. "I have the impression that a lot of people do not know where it stands, which makes me nervous,"said one executive at a Western bank.
Bingo. Actually, it can, and one word can be used to explain the losses: "lots." Or "lots, lots" if the problem is not just contained to ports but, as we also warned over a year ago, is spread across the fabric of China's entire financial system.
There is some indication that the probes may no longer be local. In recent days, one of the banks that has been seeking to access the storage facility at Penglai has been informed that the probe now include authorities from Beijing, according to a person familiar with the matter.The Hong Kong Monetary Authority, or HKMA, said it is keeping a close eye on developments amid concerns that banks in the city have become dangerously exposed to China's economy through excessive lending."The HKMA has been closely monitoring the credit exposure, including those incurred from the business of commodity finance, of the banking sector," a spokeswoman said in an emailed response to queries Friday. "Authorized institutions are expected to maintain sufficiently robust system of controls to manage the specific risks that they are facing," an HKMA spokeswoman said.
But why would the Hong Kong central bank be concerned? Doesn't it know that the addition of 800,000 part-time jobs coupled with the collapse of over half a million full time jobs was just spun as the most positive jobs report in the US since 1999 and led to the first Dow Jones close over 17,000 ever? After all, can't the HKMA just BTFATH and watch its problems disappear? After all that is precisely what the US administration beckons the local middle class to do. Because who needs a job, be it full or part time, when one has an E*trade terminal.
From Before......
http://www.anirudhsethireport.com/china-probes-missing-metals-imports-at-qingdao-port/
China probes missing metals imports at Qingdao port
24 June 2014 - 5:58 am
Chinese authorities are investigating questionable financial deals that used metals stored at Qingdao port as collateral for financing. With more cases of collateral fraud expected to come to light, stamping out this problem will be no easy task.
At the center of the current investigation is Qingdao based Dezheng Resources, alleged to have obtained loans from multiple banks by pledging and re-pledging the same stockpiles of metals as collateral. The company, a private natural resources developer founded in 2004, is now on the brink of collapse.
The investigation was launched after Citic Resources, a commodities trader belonging to China’s state-owned investment company Citic Group, discovered that multiple receipts had been issued for copper and aluminum in bond at the port in northeast China. Citic asked a local court for a sequestration order to protect its assets, but the company said last Wednesday that more than half of the 223,270 tons of aluminum in question was missing from the port’s bonded area.
Paper trail
The Dezheng case involves bills of lading and warehouse receipts. A bill of lading is issued by a shipping company and lists the details of a shipment of merchandise, such as its destination and the name of a ship carrying it. A warehouse receipt is issued by a warehousing company.
Both documents are securities as defined by the commercial code and must be presented to shipping and warehousing companies to receive goods from their warehouses. These companies, in turn, are legally required to hand over the goods to the holder of the document. Given the strong rights attached to these documents, banks accept them as collateral for loans.
But fabricating a bill of lading or warehouse receipt could allow someone to obtain loans or merchandise illegally.
When a Chinese company imports metals or other commodities, it usually receives a long-term letter of credit denominated in a foreign currency from a bank. The company then submits this letter to an overseas trading company to receive the commodities, with payment made after the goods are delivered.
Until the letter of credit comes due, the company can use a bill of lading for the shipment to borrow funds from a different bank at a low interest rate. As long as the company continues repaying the loan, the bank has no need to present the bill of lading to the shipping company, meaning cases of commodities being used as collateral on multiple loans rarely come to light.
The suspected fraud by Dezheng Resources was reportedly uncovered when a bank, seeking to exercise its collateral rights, brought a bill of lading to a shipping company at the port.
Tantalizing profits
The Citic Resources case at Qingdao port is just the tip of the iceberg. Fabrication of bills of lading and warehouse receipts is widespread in China due to the potential for turning a quick, hefty profit. Companies such as Dezheng use metals-backed loans to circumvent the government’s strict capital controls. Using imported metals as collateral, these companies secure low-interest financing from banks and then invest the funds on a short-term basis in high-return financial products.
Fraudulent transactions using bills of lading are expected to subside temporarily due to the authorities’ recent crackdown. But the computerization of these documents, seen as a highly effective way to prevent their fabrication, is progressing only slowly. And as long as significant profits are available from high-yield domestic financial products, the fabrication of documents will “come back” in various forms, a financial industry official said.
WSJ
Foreign Banks Still in the Dark About Missing
Metals in China
Banks Can't Access Storage Facilities; Scale of Possible Losses Can't Be Tallied
June 30, 2014 8:45 a.m. ET
Foreign banks are still in the dark about any possible losses related to the allegedly fraudulent use of metals as collateral for loans in China.
At least a half dozen Western lenders, including Citigroup Inc. C +0.48% and Standard Chartered STAN.LN +0.65% PLC, provided loans to trading firms that were backed by metals such as copper and aluminum stored in Qingdao, on China's eastern seaboard.
Local authorities in Qingdao, and Penglai, another port city also in Shandong province, have been investigating whether the metals have been reused several times as collateral by traders and companies seeking funding. Already, a major state-owned enterprise,Citic Resources Holdings Ltd. 1205.HK -1.55% , said some metals that it has stored at the Qingdao port can't be located.
But because banks can't get access to the storage facilities at Dagang in Qingdao and Penglai port where the probes are under way, the scale of any possible losses can't be tallied up.
"I have the impression that a lot of people do not know where it stands, which makes me nervous," said one executive at a Western bank.
There is some indication that the probes may no longer be local. In recent days, one of the banks that has been seeking to access the storage facility at Penglai has been informed that the probe now include authorities from Beijing, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The Hong Kong Monetary Authority, or HKMA, said it is keeping a close eye on developments amid concerns that banks in the city have become dangerously exposed to China's economy through excessive lending.
"The HKMA has been closely monitoring the credit exposure, including those incurred from the business of commodity finance, of the banking sector," a spokeswoman said in an emailed response to queries Friday. "Authorized institutions are expected to maintain sufficiently robust system of controls to manage the specific risks that they are facing," an HKMA spokeswoman said.
Banks in Hong Kong are especially exposed to lending to Chinese clients, who face higher interest rates at home. But data from the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, covering banks including the Hong Kong units of HSBC Holdings HSBA.LN +0.96% PLC and Standard Chartered, show that trade finance accounted for just 8.6% of total loans at the end of April. Brokerage CLSA reckons that only a small portion of that, or about 10%, is related to the metals trade in China.
Executives from the foreign banks involved in the probe say Decheng Mining, a Qingdao-based metals trader, and its parent Dezheng Resources are the focus of an official probe into allegations that entities linked to these two companies illegally pledged the same stockpiles of commodities for multiple loans. Qingdao port authorities have confirmed that there is a government probe but haven't identified any companies being investigated. The government hasn't officially commented on the investigation. Attempts to reach executives at Decheng haven't been successful.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-06-04/china-scrambling-after-discovering-thousands-tons-rehypothecated-copper-aluminum-mis
China Scrambling After "Discovering" Thousands Of Tons Of Rehypothecated Copper, Aluminum Missing
"Banks are worried about their exposure," warns one warehousing source, "there is a scramble for people to head down there at the minute and make sure that their metal that they think is covered by a warehouse receipt actually exists."
The rehypothecated catastrophe that we discussed in great detail here (copper financing), here (all commodities), and here (global contagion) appears to be gathering speed as the China's northeastern port of Qingdao has halted shipments of aluminum and copper due to an investigation by authorities after they found "there is a discrepancy in metal that should be there and metal that is actually there."
Copper prices are tumbling already (despite Gartman's most recent prognostication on Dr. Copper's China recovery meme) as the world's 7th largest port disallows any shipments until the probe is complete.
"It's such a massive port I would think virtually everybody has exposure," warned one analyst, adding that this will be bearish for metals as "a lot of Western banks will try to offload material and try not to deal with Chinese merchants."
China's northeastern port of Qingdao has halted shipments of aluminium and copper due to an investigation by authorities, causing concern among bankers and trade houses financing the metals, trading and warehousing sources said on Monday. Port authorities could not immediately be reached for comment. China has a public holiday on Monday."We were told we can't ship any material out while they do this investigation," a source at a trading house said. The port of Qingdao is China's third-largest foreign trade port and the world's seventh-largest port, trading with 700 ports in more than 180 countries, according to its website (www.qdport.com/)."Banks are worried about their exposure," one warehousing source in Singapore said."There is a scramble for people to head down there at the minute and make sure that their metal that they think is covered by a warehouse receipt actually exists," he said.
Metal imports have been partly driven in China as a means to raise finance, where traders can pledge metal as collateral to obtain better terms. In some cases the same shipment can be pledged to more than one bank, fuelling hot money inflows and spurring a clampdown by Chinese authorities.
"It appears there is a discrepancy in metal that should be there and metal that is actually there," said another source at a warehouse company with operations at the port."We hear the discrepancy is 80,000 tonnes of aluminium and 20,000 tonnes of copper, but we hear that the volumes will actually be higher. It's either missing or it was never there - there have been triple issuing of documentation," he said.Beijing last year set new rules to curb currency speculation amid signs that hot money inflows helped push the yuan to a series of record highs. The rules required banks to tighten the management of their foreign exchange lending and types of clients that are able to access those loans."It's such a massive port I would think virtually everybody has exposure," the trading source said."Once the investigation is over, it could be bearish for metals. I think that a lot of Western banks will try to offload material and try not to deal with Chinese merchants," the trading source added.
Critically - this is a major problem for any shadow-banking credit creation process as if the rehypothecated commodity-backed CCFDs are ultimately unwound, 1) someone will not get their collateral (payment problems - bailouts?), 2) less real collateral means less real credit expansion (which banks can;t fill because the firms that use this method of financing are anything but creditworthy), and 3) liquidation of any assets will proceed rapidly...
Goldman concludes that "an unwind of Chinese commodity financing deals would likely result in an increase in availability of physical inventory (physical selling), and an increase in futures buying (buying back the hedge) – thereby resulting in alower physical price than futures price, as well as resulting in a lower overall price curve (or full carry)."In other words, it would send the price of the underlying commodity lower.
Finally, as we showed before when it comes to commodity financing deals, in terms of total notional value, both copper and aluminum pale by comparison to the one metal most used (by value) in China as a funding substitute: gold
As we commented previously:
When we previously contemplated what the end of funding deals (which the PBOC and the China Politburo seems rather set on) may mean for the price of other commodities, we agreed with Goldman that it would be certainly negative. And yet in the case of gold, it just may be that even if China were to dump its physical to some willing 3rd party buyer, its inevitable cover of futures "hedges", i.e. buying gold in the paper market, may not only offset the physical selling, but send the price of gold back to levels seen at the end of 2012 when gold CCFDs really took off in earnest.In other words, from a purely mechanistical standpoint, the unwind of China's shadow banking system, while negative for all non-precious metals-based commodities, may be just the gift that all those patient gold (and silver) investors have been waiting for. This of course, excludes the impact of what the bursting of the Chinese credit bubble would do to faith in the globalized, debt-driven status quo. Add that into the picture, and into the future demand for gold, and suddenly things get really exciting.
So if tens of thousands of tons of copper and aluminum are suddenly "missing", one can assuredly say: "at least the gold is still there." Right?
and.....
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