Foreign banks in China have warned that they would suffer severe “collateral damage” from new rules intended to limit off-balance sheet lending by domestic banks.
Beijing has drafted regulations to restrict interbank loans after financial institutions used them to circumvent government-imposed credit controls. The restrictions are directed at domestic banks that have aggressively increased their interbank business in recent years, but foreign banks, already struggling in China, fear they risk being caught in the crossfire.
If the fresh rules were to go into force as currently drafted, international banks would lose a critical source of funding and revenue for their operations, foreign bankers told the Financial Times.