Slower expansion

Source: Xinhua | 2018-06-21

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 yesterday.

The asset scale of the country’s 68 trust companies came in at 25.61 trillion yuan (US$3.96 trillion) at the end of the first quarter this year, down 2.41 percent from the volume at the end of 2017.

Year on year, the growth 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.