China ‘wealth manager’ Zhongzhi goes bankrupt amid property market collapse

Zhongzhi is a shadow banking-linked wealth manager with major exposure to the property sector. Its not a bank so manages to operate outside many of the prudential and regulatory rules governing commercial banks. Shadow banking firms typically sell ‘wealth products’ to retail and channel the proceeds to real estate developers and other sectors.

• the filing for bankruptcy has come after the firm failed to repay debt, being mired deep in the property market downturn
• its assets are insufficient to pay all its debts
• back in November it apologised to investors and admitted it was insolvent with liabilities circa USD64bn
• the bankruptcy filing will ease the firm’s asset liquidation, investors will be lucky to recover more than 30% of their money, and it’ll take a long time

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This is not just about Zhongzhi, it points to contagion from the property debt crisis more broadly into the financial sector.