Emerging market fund managers have started buying back into China’s largest banks, despite fears of rising bad loans, off-balance sheet lending to the shadow banking sector and a jump in interbank lending rates to a two-year high.
Chinese financial stocks have fallen dramatically out of favour since 2011, with the vast majority of emerging market equity funds holding sizeable underweight positions in the sector or shunning it full stop.
However, fund managers have turned net buyers of China’s four large state-controlled banks since last summer even as China’s central bank and regulators have sought to drain cash from the banking sector after years of runaway debt growth.