A release of the Chinese Government has cast a this week in the staffs of major international banks in the country. In a message posted Monday, the Sasac, the powerful commission responsible for the supervision and management of the assets of the State, announced that it would support the cause of the large public companies attempting to renegotiate the payment of their financières loss contracted to Western banks on certain derivatives. "It is normal that companies use legal means to protect their rights in their business activities." "We will support the companies that they minimize their losses," warns the institution, which operates the largest public companies.
Since the end of 2008, the authorities in Beijing do not hide their irritation with the lengthening of the long list of financial losses of the Chinese groups having negotiated in bad conditions, by agreement with major Western institutions to Singapore or Hong Kong, contracts to cover so-called "speculative" on variations in rates, the exchange risk or fluctuations in the price of raw materials.

"Financial opium."
The Government digests including not the 1.94 billion lost last year by airline Air China, Shanghai Air and China Eastern on contracts of coverage on kerosene - all had relied on an escalation of the price of a barrel or 2 billions of dollars of uncovered losses last December by Citic Pacific, a conglomerate related to the Chinese powerwho had made bad bets on the evolution of the value of the Australian dollar and the euro. Devoting the wrath of the authorities and part of public opinion, a Chinese Professor, quoted in several media, associating himself last week products a "financial opium" which would have used foreign banks to stoned State corporations.
In his commentary the Sasac is, itself, suggested that the societies of the countries have been misled by "complexity and risks" of certain contracts to leverage. "These groups who have for years earned lots of money as long as their positions were good say today, after the brutal reversal of markets, that they did not understand contracts. "And the Government is to protect them," summarizes, annoyed, a Western banker refusing to see its name quoted on this sensitive subject.
If no Bank of Foreign Affairs has so far publicly recognized the renegotiation of the losses of the Chinese groups, the Agency Dow Jones says that Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and Morgan Stanley have already received letters from some airlines and Cosco, the Chinese shipping giant, informing them that certain transactions past could be decreed "void, invalid or unenforceable.According to our information, none of the French banks performing classic cover contracts in the country have for the moment was shown finger by the Chinese authorities, who would also not call into question the principle of the non-speculative "hedging".
According to experts, the warning of the commission responsible for the supervision and management of the assets of the State is an element of negotiation between the groups of State and their creditors who are likely to have to accept to revise downward the debts of the companies concerned do not risk compromising the long-term development on the gigantic Chinese market.