When China’s bond issuers run into trouble, investors face an increasingly tough task in extracting any returns.
Bond defaults across the world’s second-biggest economy are rising, with more borrowers failing either to repay creditors’ initial investments, or make regular interest payments. Typically, some investors can find a way to hold on to so-called distressed debt and recover scraps of cash. Specialist investors also buy this debt on the cheap, in what can be a lucrative if risky strategy. Now, though, returns are shrinking.
In 2016, 46 per cent of borrowers in default made some sort of principal or interest payments to bondholders, according to Wind, a financial information provider. Last year, that total dropped to 13 per cent.