China faces $US80b foreign equity losses

We’re sorry, this feature is currently unavailable. We’re working to restore it. Please try again later.

Advertisement

This was published 15 years ago

China faces $US80b foreign equity losses

China may have lost more than $US80 billion ($A122 billion) of its foreign exchange reserves after buying into equities just before world markets collapsed last year, the Financial Times said on Monday.

The poorly-timed investments were carried out by the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, or SAFE, the manager of the nation's nearly $US2 trillion ($A3 trillion) of reserves, the newspaper said.

"SAFE has built up one of the largest US equity portfolios of any foreign government entity investing abroad, including the major sovereign wealth funds," Brad Setser, an economist at the Council on Foreign Relations, a US-based think tank, told the paper.

"It appears SAFE began diversifying into equities early in 2007 and, rather than being deterred by the subprime crisis, it continued to buy."

The report comes after Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said last week he was "a little bit worried" about the fate of his nation's huge investments in the United States.

Any estimate of SAFE's investment portfolio has a large margin of error, since it does not tell the public where it puts its money.

However, according to Setser's calculations, reported by the Financial Times, China has lost over $US80 billion ($A122 billion) on holdings of about $US160 billion ($A244 billion) in overseas equities.

China's decision to diversify into equities came after growing criticism that it was not getting enough out of its traditional method of parking its forex reserves mainly in safe but low-yielding US Treasury bonds.

In another bid to diversify, China in 2007 set up a sovereign wealth fund, the China Investment Corporation, charged with managing $US200 billion ($A305 billion) of the nation's forex reserves.

That corporation's investment also have now come across as being badly timed, with huge losses sustained on a number of high-profile transactions, including shares in troubled financial giants Morgan Stanley and Blackstone.

Most Viewed in Business

Loading