China's Bubbly Bond Market

Retuers: China's shadow banking risk shifts to booming bond market

A year after China's financial regulators squared up to the systemic perils of "shadow banking", the threat is shifting to a booming corporate bond market, and risky borrowers' debt is finding its way into products aimed at retail investors.

An opaque network of trust companies and non-bank lenders had grown their annual market to a hefty 2.9 trillion yuan ($450 billion) in loans before regulators stepped in, spooked by rising defaults on wealth-management products (WMPs) backed by such high-interest shadow lending.