China’s money has lost its currency — and not just in US dollar terms. Earlier this year, foreign companies welcomed China’s interest in buying up their assets. In the first quarter, the value of overseas purchases announced by Chinese buyers came to $86bn, just over one-tenth shy of deals announced for all of 2015. The eye-catching headline numbers have drawn focus away from a side-effect of Chinese companies’ indiscriminate play for global assets: more deals have failed this year than ever before.
The year’s early collapses, such as privately owned Chinese insurer Anbang’s pitch for Starwood Hotels & Resorts (which it surrendered to Marriott International) were mostly a factor of domestic Chinese factors. Anbang’s ambitions were curtailed by politics, with financing the main stumbling block — an unlikely problem for a deal that had the state’s blessing. Politics was also behind the withdrawal of Hong Kong-listed insurance peer Fosun International’s bid for Phoenix, the Israeli insurer. Last December Fosun revealed that Guo Guangchang, its chairman and founder, had disappeared for a few days to assist authorities with an investigation. After a two-year spending binge of nearly $10bn, the company has struggled to keep up its deal volume since.
More recently, China’s clampdown on capital outflows has severely restricted its companies’ ability to shift money offshore for big-ticket purchases. And this month, the China Insurance Regulatory Commission halted sales of certain insurance products, funds from which have often gone towards facilitating corporate deals.