Were this a more perfect world — and China’s a more perfect stock market — then Huarong, the bad bank of ICBC would be listing its shares in October, raising more than $1bn for its current backers, including Warburg Pincus, KKR and ICBC itself.
Instead, after the meltdown in the mainland equity markets last week, new listings have been banned indefinitely. Not that sentiment towards banks such as ICBC was terribly positive before share prices were sent crashing.
Banks have always been a proxy on economic growth in their home markets. So, as China slows down, demand for credit slows correspondingly. There is no motivation for a steel mill to borrow more when demand for everything from cars to castles is declining (tycoons in China do literally build castles: there is a replica of Buckingham Palace in Hunan).