BEIJING: China’s trust sector grew at its fastest rate for two years in the second quarter, largely driven by a surge in private investors seeking to maximize their exposure to the stock market.
The total assets under management of China’s 58 trust companies rose 10.1 percent from the previous three months to a record high of 15.9 trillion yuan (US$2.6 trillion), according to figures released yesterday by the China Trustee Association.
The pace of growth accelerated from 3 percent in the first quarter and was the fastest since the second quarter of 2013.
“The rise was mainly due to an increase in demand from Chinese households who shifted their savings to higher-return investment assets,” Yin Xingmin, director of the Trust Research Center at Fudan University.
The surge helped to fuel a boom in China’s stock market as trust companies ploughed 1.4 trillion yuan, or 9.5 percent of their investment assets, into equities, up from 5.8 percent in the first quarter, the association said.
Trust companies are part of China’s gray financing network, which lends money to individuals and companies to buy stocks. The system is widely blamed for fueling a highly leveraged bull run in the stock market and then triggering a free fall that wiped 30 percent off share values in just three weeks.
“As the stock market gradually returns to the trend of value investment, investments by trust assets are expected to decline,” Yin said.
