Maike Metals International is selling assets and studying a broader restructuring as it battles to survive a liquidity crisis, said chair He Jinbi in an interview with the Financial Times.The final plan could involve “shareholding restructuring, asset restructuring and debt restructuring”, said He, illustrating the extent of the difficulties at one of China’s biggest commodity trading houses.
Maike, which handles a quarter of the country’s refined copper imports, is an important intermediary between Chinese metal consumers and global merchants such as Glencore and Trafigura.
The potential for an extensive restructuring at Maike shows how China’s economic slowdown — fuelled by Beijing’s crackdown on the property sector and its rigid anti-Covid policies — is translating into a liquidity crisis at highly leveraged companies in the private sector.