China's trust sector reports slowdown amid risk prevention

BEIJING - Total assets managed by Chinese trust companies reported the first quarterly drop in two years as the government has placed increasing emphasis on financial risk prevention, data from the China Trustee Association showed Wednesday.

The asset scale of the country's 68 trust companies came in at 25.61 trillion yuan ($6.46 trillion) at the end of first quarter this year, down 2.41 percent from the volume at the end of 2017.

On a year-on-year basis, the expansion of 16.6 percent also slowed from the 29.8-percent rise at the end of the fourth quarter last year, the data showed.

Zhou Ping, researcher with the China Trustee Association, attributed the slower expansion to companies' self-initiated downsizing amid government's deleveraging efforts to prevent financial risks.

With the implementation of new regulations on capital management, the industry's asset scale may shrink further, Zhou said.

Wednesday's data also showed total business revenues for the trust sector stood at 24.3 billion yuan in the first quarter, with profits reaching 16.8 billion yuan.

China's asset management businesses have experienced rapid growth in recent years, but their expansion has also caused high leveraging and shadow banking, which authorities have attempted to rein in.