STOCK MARKET WATCH -- Tuesday, 5 February 2013

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11. Developers turn to shadow banks as Chinese property market slows

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/finance/2013/0205/1224329656537.html

Ghostly skeletons of large residential estates, half-finished shopping malls, empty apartment buildings with no windows, serviced by dirt tracks full of potholes. Sound familiar?

These images of half-built luxury ghost developments are known to Irish readers, but they are relatively new in China, where the property market has slowed significantly since the government introduced cooling measures to stop the boom turning into a bubble.

In places like Ordos in Inner Mongolia, hundreds of projects have ground to a halt after a building boom fuelled by over-investment went bust, leaving tens of thousands of investors at risk of default.

In the search for options that offer more than the minimal return of a bank deposit book, investors in China have been piling into investment vehicles known as trusts, which promise high annual interest rates and a return of principal for people with more than a million yuan (€120,000) to invest.