Shang fulin, chair of the China Banking Regulatory Commission, openly proposed the use of debt-for-equity swaps to help Chinese banks lighten their growing load of non-performing loans on Wednesday at the close of the country’s annual legislative meeting, The Financial Times reported. “We are studying the plan and it’s not as simple as some reports said,” Shang said, an apparent reference to previous reports that swaps were planned to allow mainland banks to trade debt in underperforming firms for stock holdings would be used to bring down the roughly US$200 billion total of soured loans known to be sitting on their balance sheets.
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