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On October 8, in accordance with Articles 47 and 49 of the Anti-Monopoly Law of the People's Republic of China, taking into account factors such as the nature, extent and duration of Meituan's illegal acts, the State Administration for Market Regulation made an administrative penalty decision in accordance with the law, ordering Meituan to stop its illegal acts, fully refund the exclusive cooperation deposit of 1.289 billion yuan, and impose a fine of 3% of its sales of 114.748 billion yuan in China in 2020, totaling 3.442 billion yuan.
If you add that Tmall was fined 18.2 billion yuan in April, many of Didi's APP fell in July, Evergrande was interviewed in August, and since this year, many seemingly invincible giant companies have been sanctioned by regulatory iron fists because of various violations of their own development.
These events have all aroused widespread concern and heated discussion in public opinion, and various rumors about the bankruptcy of these hundreds of billions of market capitalization giants are also very loud.
One of them is that these enterprises will not fall, will not be liquidated, because they are too large, too wide-ranging, and belong to the typical example of "too big to fail" that is widely recognized by social psychology.
Today, Dazhi will briefly talk to you about this so-called "big and can't fall."
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"Too big to fall" is an imported word, according to its literal understanding, specifically refers to the fact that when some enterprises are on the verge of bankruptcy, the government and corresponding financial institutions cannot ignore their bankruptcy fate, and even invest in public currency to save each other, so as to avoid the huge chain reaction set off after the collapse of enterprises, causing more serious harm to the whole society. The original English text is "Too big to fail" (TBTF).
Correspondingly, there is a more niche concept called "Too interconnected to fail" (TITF). Dazhi looked at the data and found that the main difference between the two is that the "contribution" mechanism to systemic risk is different.
The so-called TBTF mainly emphasizes the amount of losses, which means that once a TBTF enterprise is liquidated, the total amount of losses caused to creditors is very large. The TITF emphasizes the amplification mechanism, that is, once the TITF enterprise is liquidated, the number of creditors affected by it is so large that it may lead to more institutions becoming insolvent and liquidating. However, in practice, the two are often equivalent, because if a company has the characteristics of TBTF, it will often have the characteristics of TITF at the same time, and the two are confused or replaced by the former, which is not a big problem.
This concept has existed for a long time, but it really became popular and popularized after the 2008 US financial crisis.
The financial storm triggered by the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, the world's fourth largest investment bank at that time, is still a bloody storm in retrospect, with countless investment institutions falling one after another, and countless days of funds also gone. A month later, AIG, one of the world's largest insurance groups, was also mired in a severe liquidity crisis.
At this point, the U.S. government can no longer wait for it, in the face of the moribund AIG, bald eagle repeatedly weighed the pros and cons, with the approval of Congress, began to pour gold coins into the AIG to revitalize its liquidity.
The specific approach is to come forward by the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States, the U.S. government through the purchase of preferred shares, loans and direct capital injection for AIG to provide $180 billion in funds, in the process of saving AIG, the U.S. government even once sent staff to settle in, a comprehensive takeover of the company's operations, compared to countless dead investment institutions, its strength, its good intentions can be seen.
The reason for this is that AIG is a "big and infallible" enterprise in the traditional sense, in 2008, its business has spread to more than 130 countries around the world, the number of insurance agents exceeds 700,000, and the number of customers is as many as 88 million.
If AIG were to die, it would not only have an irreparable impact on the global economy, but also, to some extent, mean the bankruptcy of the insurance and credit markets of the global free economy, and its chain reaction and consequences would be unbearable for anyone.
In addition, AIG Insurance Company also has a more serious problem, that is, the issuance of a huge amount of financial derivatives, since 2003, AIG's financial products department, has sold a large number of over-the-counter financial derivatives, such as Dow Jones American Insurance Group Commodity Index over-the-counter options, U.S. real estate mortgage bond over-the-counter put options, etc., with a market value of more than trillions of dollars.
In addition, AIG has also provided a large number of debt default insurance for financial institutions in the United States, such as Goldman Sachs Bank, Citibank and other world-class banks, which have purchased AIG's astronomical amount of debt default insurance.
Therefore, after the subprime mortgage crisis, AIG in addition to its own large number of product thunderstorms, will also face a huge amount of short selling subprime mortgage payments, if not rescued, the value of these debt default insurance will be instantly cleared, become worthless, and then form a second blow to the US banking industry.
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It is not difficult to see from the above cases that AIG not only has a close relationship between its business and social livelihood and economic life, but also deeply bundles many important industries such as the financial industry on which the United States depends for its survival, and then superimposes the unique high-leverage operation characteristics of financial institutions, which together constitute the factors of its TBTF characteristics.
The above factors that form the characteristics of TBTF, combined with the "no available substitutes" in the five systemical importance measures proposed by the Basel Committee, are enough to give companies the status of TBTF.
If an economic entity is both a trait factor and a "no alternative available," it is theoretically unbreakable, even as natural as breathing.
In China, there are countless such enterprises, and they are often emerging, high-tech, monopolistic on the Internet market, and involve large comprehensive groups in the financial industry. Such enterprises often deeply kidnap the social and people's livelihood, and intervene in the financial market, which cannot be replaced at will. The companies mentioned above (and often like to hang on to the skin of technology companies) have all formed this status without exception.
Such enterprises, in the context of China's victory in the battle against systemic financial risks, will undoubtedly pose a strong challenge to supervision.
Guo Shuqing, chairman of the Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, has repeatedly stressed in the past few years that it is necessary to guard against new types of "big and cannot fall" risks and do a good job in preventing and resolving financial risks.
Guo Shuqing pointed out that a small number of technology companies occupy a dominant position in the micropayment market, involve the interests of the general public, and have the characteristics of important financial infrastructure. Some large technology companies are involved in various financial and technology fields, and cross-border mixed operations. We must pay attention to the complexity and spillover of the risks of these institutions, timely and accurately defuse bombs, and eliminate new systemic risks.
How to understand Chairman Guo's words in essence, Dazhi believes that it is necessary to implement the "four gos" of deleveraging, risk reduction, monopoly, and mixed industry for "a small number of technology companies" that "have the characteristics of important financial infrastructure", resolutely put an end to these enterprises using big data, market position and capital and other advantages, take advantage of their so-called "big and cannot fall" status, prohibit fair competition, eat huge financial premiums, use the blankness and ambiguity of data confirmation rights in the current legal environment, and obtain improper excess returns. Engage in acts of substantial trust.
In this regard, the Economic Daily has also published an article entitled "There is no big but no fall, monopoly no longer has the space for flukes", bluntly saying that in China, there is no large and cannot fall enterprises, but also from all aspects of the anti-monopoly crackdown field, for all enterprises with luck psychology sounded the alarm bell.
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Due to factors such as high leverage (and sometimes high debt), the financial industry, including the insurance industry, is often an important area for companies to form TBTF status.
You can't talk about TBTF in the financial sector without mentioning the Financial Stability Board (FSB).
In June 2009, the Financial Stability Board, as the global financial regulator, held its inaugural meeting in Basel, Switzerland, and officially became operational.
Its members include more than 20 countries' central banks, ministries of finance and financial regulators, as well as major international financial institutions and professional committees, such as China's Ministry of Finance, the People's Bank of China, and the Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, which are members, so it is also known as the "global central bank".
Every November, the FSB publishes the annual "too big to fail" list of the global banking and insurance industry, namely G-SIBs (Global Systemically Important Banks) and G-SIIs (Global Systemically Important Insurers). The latest list of "too big to fail" was released in 2017 as follows:
These nine insurance groups that are "too big to fall" also have corresponding insurance companies in China for your reference.
There are three main dimensions of the evaluation criteria, namely the scale of the enterprise (accounting for 5%), the relevance (the degree of association between insurance companies and other financial institutions, and the scale of operating high-risk businesses such as derivatives and financial guarantees, accounting for 49.3%) and the asset structure (the scale of non-insurance business, the liquidity of insurance liabilities, the scale of short-term financing, etc., accounting for 35.9%).
Compared with companies in other industries, the potential systemic risk of TBTF Group in the insurance industry has decreased a lot, both internationally and domestically.
Domestically, China's insurance regulation is one of the most stringent in the world.
We have a responsible, 360-degree banking and insurance regulatory commission without dead ends, which has fundamentally eliminated the disorderly expansion of capital in the industry and market chaos.
From the dispute between Baowan and Anbang, to the thunderstorm in Anbang, to the takeover of insurance companies such as Huaxia and Tian'an.
Whenever capital says, "I have a bold idea," the CBIRC will also stand up in time and say, "China has a complete set of insurance laws."
The combination of capital utilization supervision, solvency supervision, reinsurance mechanism, custody mechanism, insurance protection fund advance and so on can largely nip the various systemic risks in the industry in the bud, so that the industry can move towards a more standardized and healthy development direction, and also allow the majority of insurance consumers to be more assured.
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Finally, Dazhi would like to clarify some minor misunderstandings about TBTF.
The first is for peers. Some friends in the industry often say that our company is "too big to fall", so you can buy and buy with confidence. There are also many agents who like to say that we are the top ten insurance companies in the world, and you don't have to worry.
I believe that your intentions are all good, but the concept of "too big to fall" is not used in this way.
As a way to more emphasize risk correlation and asset structure assessment, "too big to fail" is not an honor, but a risk warning, a special supervision.
The subtext of the insurance company shortlisted for this concept is actually not how safe it is, on the contrary, the risk coefficient is higher, so it must be more stringent in supervision, which does not mean that it cannot fall, nor does it mean that it will not fall (except for Chinese insurance companies, but in fact, it is not impossible to fall, but it will not go bankrupt, and there is an essential difference between the two meanings).
The second is for consumers, we buy insurance, pick insurance products, not insurance companies.
Therefore, when the agent says to you, small insurance companies have no strength, the compensation is not guaranteed, and we are a big brand, large and can not fall, not only good service and fast claims, it is recommended to believe at most half of it.
What about the other half? That, of course, comes from the product itself.
Because in China, under the strong supervision of the Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, the security of all insurance policies is the same. In other words, large companies are too big to fail (bankruptcy), and small companies to be small but not to fail (bankruptcy).
What you should pay attention to should be whether the protection coverage is complete, whether the premium expenditure is reasonable, how the value-added service is, whether the claim is fast and convenient, and other product-related issues.
If you really can't understand the terms of the product, you can also entrust a third-party insurance intermediary to provide you with the corresponding product consultation, insurance and after-sales service, and hand over professional things to professional people to make yourself feel at ease, at ease and comfortable.