Several of the undertakings enjoy financing from Chinese state banks.
For starters, Shangping has rock solid partnerships with three Chinese banks from which it has culled over 2.4 million customers from nearly 20 million combined platinum credit card holders.
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Apart from higher interest rates, anecdotal evidence that Chinese banks are tightening credit is growing.
And like Japanese banks, the Chinese ones gather deposits from thrifty households but lend only some of these back out, mainly to companies, parking the vast excess in government bonds and with the central bank (although the Chinese government, unlike Japan's debt-laden government, is a net creditor that invests these excess funds overseas).
But only days after the Chinese returned from Golden Week, a national holiday, the banks were reinvigorated.
Generally, banks say "Chinese walls" separate analysts from deal makers.
Traders and investors will continue to closely monitor U.S., EU and Chinese economic data for early clues on monetary policy actions from the central banks.
Precious metals traders and investors will continue to closely monitor U.S., EU and Chinese economic data for early clues on monetary policy actions from the central banks.
That unit is separate from its domestically focused unit, Central Huijin, which holds its stakes in Chinese banks, though CIC still controls both.
The banks look healthy largely because of repeated capital infusions, initially from the Chinese government but latterly also from foreign strategic partners and the capital markets.
This year, Chinese investment banks have an 18.2% share of bond deals from mainland or Hong Kong issuers denominated in Hong Kong dollars or U.S. dollars, compared with just 11.2% in all of 2012, according to Dealogic.
Unable to reap any meaningful strategic value from these deals, many U.S. and European banks increasingly looked at their Chinese stakes solely as financial investments, according to several legal advisers to large banks.
Other mainland banks have opened offices too, and from their sleek towers they make collateral-free loans to Chinese companies.
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