When the chink central bank tightens liquidity and Trump launches a trade war and millions of jobs are lost, let's see how these loans become assets.
Even China's Debt Market Can't Escape Alibaba Singles' Day
Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.’s Singles’ Day shopping extravaganza, which generated a record $25.3 billion in sales this year, is even affecting an obscure part of China’s debt market.
The company’s financial affiliate got regulatory approval last month to sell up to 3 billion yuan ($452 million) of what it called “shopping festival” asset-backed securities. The underlying assets are consumer loans made by Ant Financial, controlled by Alibaba’s billionaire founder Jack Ma, during the Nov. 11 Singles’ Day event, according to a prospectus seen by Bloomberg News.
On that day, customers stock up on shoes, cosmetics, electronics and even cars in nominal celebration of singlehood, with most buying through Alibaba’s main shopping sites. Ant Financial issued similar securities in 2016.
The company has already sold billions of dollars of structured notes this year, leading a trend in which Chinese e-commerce giants are offering more loans to cash-strapped millennials and packaging the debt into complex financial products that they then sell on to investors. ABS attracted global regulatory scrutiny after the 2008 financial crisis, when loans to subprime home buyers in the U.S. went bad. Since 2012, China has cautiously revived approvals of the products.
Even China's Debt Market Can't Escape Alibaba Singles' Day
Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.’s Singles’ Day shopping extravaganza, which generated a record $25.3 billion in sales this year, is even affecting an obscure part of China’s debt market.
The company’s financial affiliate got regulatory approval last month to sell up to 3 billion yuan ($452 million) of what it called “shopping festival” asset-backed securities. The underlying assets are consumer loans made by Ant Financial, controlled by Alibaba’s billionaire founder Jack Ma, during the Nov. 11 Singles’ Day event, according to a prospectus seen by Bloomberg News.
On that day, customers stock up on shoes, cosmetics, electronics and even cars in nominal celebration of singlehood, with most buying through Alibaba’s main shopping sites. Ant Financial issued similar securities in 2016.
The company has already sold billions of dollars of structured notes this year, leading a trend in which Chinese e-commerce giants are offering more loans to cash-strapped millennials and packaging the debt into complex financial products that they then sell on to investors. ABS attracted global regulatory scrutiny after the 2008 financial crisis, when loans to subprime home buyers in the U.S. went bad. Since 2012, China has cautiously revived approvals of the products.
