
Here are the impacts of new banking rules on China banks
Joint-stock banks likely to be hurt.
According to Bernstein Research, while new banking regulations and reforms are likely to improve the competitive positions of the mid-sized banks in the longer-term, in the short-term we expect regulations to hurt the joint-stock banks more than the Big 4 banks.
Here's more:
The smaller banks are more involved in speculative activities (e.g., growing interbank books) that directly or indirectly finance certain parts of the shadow banking market.
Recently, the CBRC has increased its focus on these activities and the central bank has begun to tighten its monetary policy as a means of clamping down on credit formation occurring in the shadow banking sector.
A tighter regulatory approach to interbank activities will most negatively impact the small and mid-sized banks – in particular, Minsheng Bank.
We rate China Merchants Bank and Minsheng Bank Underperform.
We prefer exposure to the larger banks which will be relatively immune to the negative impact of increased regulations on interbank assets or clamp downs on shadow banking activities. We rate CCB, BOC and ICBC Outperform.