Produced by | Bullet Finance
Author | Lili
Edit | Egg total
American Editor | Qianqian
Audit | Ode
Recently, Minsheng Bank, the "first private joint-stock bank", has been making great moves.
On May 10, Minsheng Bank once again sued Lu Zhiqiang, the head of "Oceanwide Department" and Oceanwide Group, involving an amount of more than 5 billion yuan. Previously, the State Administration of Financial Supervision approved the qualifications of Wang Xiaoyong as president of Minsheng Bank.
Born in the eighties and nineties of the last century, 12 joint-stock banks are an indispensable force in China's banking industry. Among them, Minsheng Bank was established in January 1996 and is the first national joint-stock commercial bank initiated and established by a private enterprise.
At that time, the investors of Minsheng Bank included Liu Yonghao, Zhang Hongwei, Lu Zhiqiang, Shi Yuzhu and other private enterprise giants, which can be described as "born with a golden key".
In December 2000, Minsheng Bank was listed on the main board of the Shanghai Stock Exchange, and in 2009, it was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. With the loan business of small and micro enterprises, Minsheng Bank once made great progress and was named the "king of small and micro enterprises".
However, in recent years, the halo above Minsheng Bank's head has become increasingly dim. Revenue growth is under pressure, and the non-performing rate has been at the forefront of the stock industry for a long time. More severely, with the deep adjustment of the real estate industry, the bank's asset quality in the real estate sector is facing greater risk exposure.
All kinds of signs show that after the new president Wang Xiaoyong takes office, he still needs to face challenges from many aspects, and the outside world is full of expectations for whether the new leadership team can lead Minsheng Bank to fight a "turnaround".
1. Wang Xiaoyong, the "CCB Department", officially performed his duties
Before the "May Day" holiday, the post of president of Minsheng Bank was finally settled.
Minsheng Bank announced that it had received the "Reply of the State Financial Supervision and Administration on the Qualifications of Wang Xiaoyong of Minsheng Bank", approving Wang Xiaoyong's qualifications to serve as the president of Minsheng Bank. According to the relevant regulations, Wang Xiaoyong took office as the president of Minsheng Bank from the date of approval of his qualifications.
Previously, on March 12, Minsheng Bank disclosed 13 announcements at one time, most of which were changes in senior executives. Among them, Zheng Wanchun, the "second-in-command" of Minsheng Bank, retired at the end of the year, resigned from the positions of vice chairman, executive director and president, and hired Wang Xiaoyong as the president of Minsheng Bank.
According to public information, Zheng Wanchun has reached the age of 60 and has worked in the head office of ICBC, Huarong Asset Management Company, Huarong Securities, Huarong Futures, Great Wall Asset Management Company, etc., and served as vice president of Industrial and Commercial Bank of China in October 2013 and president of Minsheng Bank in November 2015.
Wang Xiaoyong also comes from a large state-owned bank and is a "veteran" of CCB.
According to the resume, Wang Xiaoyong was born in 1970, graduated from Beijing Normal University in 1991 with a bachelor's degree, obtained a master's degree in accounting from the Central Institute of Finance in 1996, and a doctorate degree in management science and engineering from Tianjin University in 2013, and is now a senior economist.
Wang Xiaoyong served as Vice President of China Construction Bank Shandong Branch, Vice President of China Construction Bank Gansu Branch, President of Chongqing Branch of China Construction Bank, General Manager of Channel and Operation Management Department of China Construction Bank, and President of Sichuan Branch of China Construction Bank.
The two vice presidents who took office with Wang Xiaoyong are Zhang Juntong and Huang Hongri, both of whom are "post-70s" and both from within Minsheng Bank.
(Photo / Minsheng Bank 2023 Annual Report)
With the intensive appointment of senior executives, the management of Minsheng Bank has changed formations and reorganized.
Up to now, the current leadership team includes Chairman Gao Yingxin, President Wang Xiaoyong, Vice Presidents Zhang Juntong (proposed), Shi Jie, Li Bin, Lin Yunshan, and Huang Hongri (proposed), and the organizational structure has been changed from "one principal and four deputies" to "one principal and five deputies".
2. The increase in profits did not increase the revenue, and the revenue continued to decline
In the past, with the blessing of giants, Minsheng Bank made rapid progress with its small and micro enterprise loan business, and was named the "king of small and micro enterprises". In 2013, the market value of Minsheng Bank once surpassed that of China Merchants Bank, ranking first among joint-stock banks.
However, after the highlight moment, Dong Wenbiao, chairman of Minsheng Bank for 14 years, stepped down, and Hong Qi took over as chairman in 2014. Minsheng Bank began to transform, and its business strategy began to transform to the direction of retail, focusing on real estate, consumer finance and wealth management.
In June 2020, Hong Qi stepped down. Gao Yingxin, who was born in the Bank of China, "parachuted" into Minsheng Bank and became the new chairman of the bank. After the new leadership team took office, Minsheng Bank emphasized that "compliance operation is the core competitiveness" at the strategic level, and the emphasis on risk control has been greatly increased.
However, the annual report data in recent years shows that the performance of Minsheng Bank is under pressure.
In 2020, Minsheng Bank's net profit attributable to its parent company fell from 53.819 billion yuan in 2019 to 34.309 billion yuan. Since then, its net profit attributable to the parent company has been hovering around 35 billion yuan, with 34.381 billion yuan and 35.269 billion yuan in 2021 and 2022, respectively.
In terms of operating income, in 2020, Minsheng Bank's operating income reached the highest peak in recent years of 184.951 billion yuan, but it declined in 2021 and 2022 one after another, reaching 168.804 billion yuan and 142.476 billion yuan respectively.
According to the latest annual report, as of the end of 2023, the total assets of Minsheng Bank were 7.67 trillion yuan, an increase of 419.292 billion yuan or 5.78% from the end of the previous year. In terms of profit, its net profit attributable to the parent company in 2023 will be 35.823 billion yuan, an increase of 1.57% year-on-year.
However, the bank's revenue growth is still under pressure, and the financial report shows that its operating income in 2023 will be 140.817 billion yuan, down 1.16% from 142.476 billion yuan in 2022.
Specifically, in 2023, Minsheng Bank will achieve a net interest income of 102.431 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 4.68%; The net interest margin was 1.46%, down 0.14 percentage points year-on-year.
Minsheng Bank said in its financial report that the asset side was affected by the LPR cut and the low market interest rate, and the yield on loans and investment declined. The decline in net interest margin was mainly due to the decline in asset-side pricing and the strong rigidity of debt costs.
(Photo / Minsheng Bank 2023 Annual Report)
Non-interest net income increased by 9.63% from RMB35.013 billion in 2022 to RMB38.386 billion, accounting for 27.26% of total revenue.
Specifically, the net income from fees and commissions in 2023 will be 19.236 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 1.038 billion yuan, or 5.12%.
In this regard, Minsheng Bank said in its financial report that it was mainly affected by the capital market, and the scale of asset management products such as wealth management declined, resulting in a decline in commission income from custody and other trustee businesses.
Other non-interest net income was 19.150 billion yuan, an increase of 4.411 billion yuan or 29.93% year-on-year.
At the 2023 performance exchange meeting, in response to the issue of stable interest margins, Li Bin, vice president and secretary of the board of directors of Minsheng Bank, said frankly that since the second quarter of last year, the decline in the bank's net interest margin has gradually narrowed.
Among them, the change in the cost ratio of interest-paying liabilities is similar to that of peers, mainly because the downward trend of interest-bearing assets and loan yields is gradually slowing down; On the whole, it is expected that the net interest margin of the whole industry will continue to decline in 2024, and the net interest margin of Minsheng Bank will continue to be under pressure, but Minsheng Bank will continue to strive to keep the overall decline in net interest margin lower than that of its peers.
3. Nearly 400 billion non-performing disposal in 3 years, and the risk of the real estate industry still needs to be solved
"Jiemian News Bullet Finance" found that whether it is in the 2023 annual report or at the performance exchange meeting, words such as asset quality and risk management and control have been mentioned many times by the management of Minsheng Bank.
At the performance exchange meeting, Huang Hongri, vice president of Minsheng Bank, made it clear that due to the transformation and restructuring of the economic structure and the fact that the real estate sector has not yet recovered significantly, its asset quality is still under pressure. In the next step, we will enhance the initiative of risk management and control, strengthen risk investigation and early warning, and strengthen the disposal of non-performing assets in high-risk areas.
Behind this, the pressure of non-performing loans of Minsheng Bank has increased significantly, and the non-performing rate has been in the forefront of the stock industry for a long time.
Since 2014, the Real Estate Finance Department of Minsheng Bank proposed the "investment banking" of real estate finance, and since then, it has begun to establish frequent cooperation with real estate companies, and has signed strategic cooperation agreements with more than 20 real estate companies such as Sunac, CIFI, Tahoe and Jinke.
With the intensification of debt distress in the real estate industry, the real estate loan risk of Minsheng Bank has accelerated, and the non-performing rate of real estate has risen rapidly.
In 2020, after Gao Yingxin took the helm of Minsheng Bank, she gradually laid a solid foundation in three aspects: risk management, internal control management, and collection and disposal of troubled assets.
According to the data of annual reports over the years, the non-performing loans of Minsheng Bank from 2020 to 2022 were 70.049 billion yuan, 72.338 billion yuan, and 69.387 billion yuan respectively, of which the year-on-year decrease in 2022 was 4.08%. The non-performing loan ratios showed a downward trend, which were 1.82%, 1.79% and 1.68% respectively.
In 2023, Minsheng Bank achieved "five reductions and one increase" in the amount of non-performing loans, the non-performing loan ratio, the generation rate of non-performing loans, the amount of loans of concern, the ratio of loans of concern, and the provision coverage ratio.
According to the annual report, the non-performing loan ratio of Minsheng Bank fell to 1.48%, down 0.2 percentage points from the end of the previous year, and the non-performing loan generation rate was 1.58%, down 0.43 percentage points year-on-year, both of which have achieved steady decline for three consecutive years.
In terms of collection and disposal, the bank will collect and dispose of non-performing assets of 78.756 billion yuan in 2023. Among them, 69.926 billion yuan of non-performing loans were collected and disposed of. In 2023, 10.112 billion yuan of written off assets will be recovered, a year-on-year increase of 22.44%.
"Minsheng Bank has successfully completed the three-year planning target for the collection and disposal of non-performing and problematic assets, with nearly 400 billion yuan disposed of in three years, and the stock of non-performing and problematic assets has been well disposed of, and the asset quality has continued to be stable and improving." Gao Yingxin, chairman of Minsheng Bank, said at the results conference in March 2024.
However, in terms of asset quality in the real estate industry, the balance of non-performing loans and the non-performing ratio of Minsheng Bank to public real estate showed a double upward trend.
According to the annual report, as of the end of 2023, the balance of non-performing loans of Minsheng Bank to public real estate was 17.038 billion yuan, an increase of 1.493 billion yuan from the end of the previous year, and the non-performing loan ratio was 4.92%, an increase of 0.64 percentage points from the end of the previous year.
In the longer term, the data shows that the bank's real estate non-performing loans have been rising year by year in recent years. From 2020 to 2022, it will be 3.04 billion yuan, 9.574 billion yuan, and 15.545 billion yuan respectively. The corresponding non-performing rate of premises also increased from 0.69% in 2020 to 2.66% in 2021 and further increased to 4.28% at the end of 2022.
In addition to "stepping on thunder" some cooperative real estate companies, in 2023, Minsheng Bank and Oceanwide Holdings, the sixth largest shareholder and one of the initiators, will face off in court, which once attracted attention from the outside world.
According to the 2023 annual report, as of the end of the reporting period, Oceanwide Holdings, a shareholder of Minsheng Bank, and its affiliates had a loan balance of 18.726 billion yuan in the bank. The bank's debt dispute with Oceanwide Holdings has also exposed its exposure to the real estate sector.
In January 2023, the Beijing branch of Minsheng Bank filed a lawsuit against Wuhan Central Company, Wuhan Central Company, Oceanwide Holdings and Lu Zhiqiang for more than 7 billion yuan on the grounds of a dispute over a financial loan contract. In October and November 2023, the Beijing Financial Court made first-instance judgments in both cases, and Minsheng Bank won both cases.
On May 10, Minsheng Bank once again sued "Oceanwide" and Lu Zhiqiang, this time involving an amount of more than 5 billion yuan.
The Beijing branch of Minsheng Bank filed a lawsuit against the "Oceanwide" companies: Oceanwide Group, Oceanwide Holdings, Tonghai Holdings, Oceanwide Real Estate Investment, Oceanwide Equity Investment, Xinghuo Real Estate, Oceanwide Construction Qingdao, Shenzhen Oceanwide Real Estate, Wuhan Central Company, Wuhan Central Company, etc., on the grounds of financial loan contract disputes.
On the whole, accelerating the liquidation of risk assets and resolving historical burdens are still top priorities for Minsheng Bank. After the new management with Wang Xiaoyong as the core takes office, how will it break through the current situation of performance and asset quality? "Interface News, Bullet Finance" continues to pay attention.
*The title picture in the article is from: Interface News Gallery.