沙特丑闻升降机面纱关于海湾金融

Banks in Saudi Arabia have traditionally enjoyed a cozy relationship with prominent family-owned businesses in the country. The practice of so-called name lending — extending credit based on the reputation and standing of a company’s owners rather than on a rigorous examination of its financial health — is prevalent, not surprising for a culture that prizes deference and discretion over transparency. Bankers were only too happy to do business on such an informal basis while the economy was booming and global liquidity was abundant.

然而，今天，一桩令人震惊的企业丑闻，涉及到中国最著名的两家家族企业萨阿德集团（Saad Group）和艾哈迈德哈马德阿尔戈塞比兄弟（Ahmad Hamad Algosaibi&Brothers），打破了业界的自满情绪。这两家公司在西方法庭的决斗诉讼中，对萨阿德的财务不当行为提出了尖锐指控，亚哈指控萨阿德及其董事长萨尼亚（Maan al-Sanea）骗取了100亿美元。这两家公司都拖欠了债务，银行家估计债务总额高达220亿美元，巴林中央银行已将其巴林银行子公司置于管理之下。沙特中央银行沙特阿拉伯货币局冻结了萨尼亚的个人银行账户。

这一前所未有的涉及沙特商业机构的持续金属支柱的金融指控播出，在全国各地和海湾地区派遣了冲击波，并促进了对业务进行了激进改革的呼吁。在公司治理和透明度中需要戏剧性改善，让投资者成为公司健康状况的真实情况。并且贷方需要在营造承诺之前超越仅仅是声誉并进行严格的信用分析。

渣打银行（Standard Chartered Bank）中东和非洲首席执行官肖恩•纳尔逊（Shayne Nelson）表示，丑闻“将对地区产生影响”。“银行在放贷方面需要变得更加成熟，而良好的治理必须占上风。”

这一事件对沙特经济造成了一股沙特经济，这些经济已经遭受了过去一年的油价下跌。Jadwa Investment, a Riyadh-based investment firm, recently reduced its forecast for the country’s economic output this year — by half a percentage point to a decline of 1 percent — because of concerns about the health of family businesses and an expected tightening of credit to the sector. “Bank lending decisions will now be driven by credit officers rather than relationship managers,” says Paul Gamble, head of research at the firm.

The ramifications also extend across the Gulf region, where authorities were already struggling to deal with the fallout from the global credit crisis and a collapse in local property markets. Authorities in Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates have intervened to prop up their banking sectors over the past year, following the collapse of several Kuwaiti finance houses and a sharp decline in real estate values in Dubai and other markets.

沙特银行丑闻是一级，家庭事务。一位Kuwaiti出生的前空军飞行员Al-Sanea嫁给了亚哈的三个创始兄弟之一的女儿，这是一家拥有银行业，建筑，运输和装瓶的公司。他在亚哈的汇款子公司工作了二十年的汇款，即使他正在建立自己的萨德集团。两年前在伦敦银行巨头汇率持有3.1％的股权时，两年前在全球金融风险上取得了普遍存在。今年早些时候，福布斯将他作为世界上第62名最富有的人排名，其价值70亿美元。

在萨马宣布的情况下，可能在可能的第一次暗示了可能在没有给予任何原因的情况下，它正在冻结Al-Sanea的银行账户。该举措是Saad集团的一个不祥的发展，该集团是一个兴趣的施工，银行业，信息技术和旅行，索取300亿美元的资产和2008年底的71亿美元现金。

在Sama公告之前只有几天，在一次注意到的一点，Mashreq银行，由Abdul Aziz Al Ghurair所拥有的迪拜贷方，一个着名的阿联酋商人和阿联酋联邦全国理事会的演讲者起诉亚巴纽约州最高法院为2.25亿美元，声称它欠外汇交换交易。

AHAB countered with legal actions in the Cayman Islands and New York in July, alleging that al-Sanea had generated fraudulent transactions — through Mashreq and other third parties — to siphon roughly $10 billion out of Money Exchange. The New York suit seeks $1 billion in punitive damages from Mashreq for allegedly aiding and abetting fraud. Mashreq has rejected AHAB’s counterclaim as being “completely without merit.”

In response to AHAB’s complaint, a Cayman Islands court froze $9.2 billion of Saad Group’s worldwide assets. In August, meanwhile, the Central Bank of Bahrain appointed administrators to run the International Banking Corp., which is owned by AHAB, and Awal Bank, owned by Saad Group, after they defaulted on their debts.

银行家们一直在进行讨论，试图解开复杂的公司网络，并就前进的道路达成一致，但迄今进展甚微。他们估计，这两个集团欠80多家地区和国际银行约220亿美元。

Three European banks — Barclays, Royal Bank of Scotland and Calyon, the investment banking arm of Crédit Agricole — have petitioned the Cayman Islands Grand Court to liquidate Saad Investment Co., a Cayman-based subsidiary of Saad Group, contending that it had failed to make payments on a $2.8 billion syndicated loan.

根据标准普尔（Standard&Poor's）的数据，在海湾六国合作委员会（Gulf Cooperation Council）的调查中，30家银行对Saad和Algosaibi集团的贷款敞口总额达96亿美元。标准普尔表示，除两家银行外，其他银行对这两家银行都有一定的净敞口，这些敞口超过了10家银行调整后总股本的10%。

Banks across the region have boosted loan-loss provisions sharply in the first half of this year, which analysts believe is partly because of exposure to the two groups. National Commercial Bank, Saudi Arabia’s largest bank by assets, increased its loan-loss provisions more than sevenfold, to 425.1 million riyals ($113 million), in the second quarter. In the United Arab Emirates, where the central bank reportedly told lenders to boost their provisions for exposure to Saad and Algosaibi, Emirates NBD, the country’s largest bank by assets, more than tripled its loan-loss provisions, to 1.61 billion dirhams ($438 million), in the first half, which led to a 20 percent drop in net income in the period.

萨马省省长贾塞尔（muhammadal-Jasser）上月表示，沙特政府正在考虑如何应对债务违约的后果，但他坚称，银行体系是安全的，当局不会从银行购买受损资产。“这两家公司的债务不会给沙特银行系统带来系统性风险。然而，盈利能力可能会受到影响。”。

Victor Lohle高级信贷nalyst at Standard Chartered in Singapore, is also sanguine about the systemic impact. He estimates that Saudi banks have $5 billion of exposure to the Saad and Algosaibi groups. “Although significant, the exposure must be put into the context of a system with equity of about $50 billion,” he notes. “We expect most of the banks’ financial profiles to remain sound.”

The affair has, however, put a spotlight on the weak standards of corporate governance and lack of transparency that prevails in business and finance across the region, bankers and analysts say. Family-owned companies have traditionally disclosed only the barest details about the health of their businesses or even the roles played by their directors.

“某些GCC银行和企业团体的家庭所有权，至少在理论上创造了可能难以评估的具体风险，包括继承风险，关键人物风险，相关党的风险和传染风险”，帝国纽纳尔·沃兰，信用证analyst at Standard & Poor’s in Paris, wrote in a recent report on the Saad-Algosaibi affair. “Overall we believe that these family-ownership structures are a negative credit factor.” Volland also criticized the “minimal” disclosures by the Saad and Algosaibi groups, their creditors and regulators since the problems first surfaced. “While there are legitimate concerns with preserving truly proprietary information, lack of adequate information or signals from the affected parties tends, in our view, to weaken confidence,” he added.

改变公司惯例并非易事。迪拜Pinsent Masons律师事务所合伙人艾伦•伍德（Alan Wood）指出，治理改革“需要在海湾地区的文化背景下进行，该地区非常重视声誉和谨慎性。”。

只要海湾公司和银行在该地区内部限制了他们的活动，就会有很大的压力来改变那些不透明的做法。但与国际市场和金融机构的环节增长正在为改革产生需求。

“There has never been a need for local firms to become more transparent and adopt best corporate governance practices,” says a senior executive at a British bank with extensive experience in the region, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “In the West, regulation has evolved over many years, and we have had major failures. This is the first in the Middle East, and they do not know how to deal with it. This is the shock that will change the system.”

一些分析人士还认为，萨阿德-阿尔戈塞比事件将加速改革努力。“这种情况应该加强对名义贷款的态度，尤其是对于上市公司和那些进入国际债务市场的人，”Ben Simpfendorfer说，他是一位经验丰富的阿拉伯人和前中东战略家，现在是香港皇家银行的首席中国经济学家。“因此，更多外资持有本地股票将是向前迈出的重要一步。”

阿联酋经济部长Sultan bin Saeed al-Mansouri上个月在迪拜商会（Dubai Chamber of Commerce）的一次演讲中表示，这种情况损害了投资者的信心，他承认有必要进行改革。他说：“现在是采取行动的正确时机。

总部设在迪拜的非营利组织海合会董事会研究所（GCC Board Directors Institute）今年早些时候发布了一份报告，强调了海合会六个成员国（巴林、科威特、阿曼、卡塔尔、沙特阿拉伯和阿拉伯联合酋长国）改革的必要性。这份名为“构建更好的董事会”的报告指出，只有55%的海合会公司披露了董事会成员的主要高管职位，而欧洲这一比例为100%；只有32%的公司披露了董事会成员担任的其他职位，而欧洲这一比例为97%。它敦促减少董事会的人数；任命强有力的审计、提名和薪酬委员会；努力吸引更多的国际董事加入海湾公司的董事会；提高公司透明度。

“该地区的资本市场再保险gulators have been stepping up efforts to introduce standards of governance for companies on their exchanges,” says Soha Ellaithy, program manager at the BDI. “We expect that there will be more efforts on the part of all GCC regulators to improve transparency and oversee corporate activities given the recent events.”

It remains to be seen whether such efforts will have a significant impact on corporate behavior anytime soon. In recent years, Bahrain, Dubai and Qatar have created financial centers that promote high standards of regulation and corporate disclosure, including the requirement to publish regular results under International Financial Reporting Standards. A recent study by the Dubai International Financial Center estimated that Gulf family businesses could be worth as much as $500 billion and were a potentially rich source of public stock offerings. But Dubai’s pioneering international stock market, Nasdaq Dubai, has managed to attract only 15 listings since its founding in 2005, with a total market capitalization of $24 billion. Many of the region’s family-owned businesses sit on large cash piles and see little need to change the way they have conducted business for decades.

许多投资者批评该地区最大的市场，价值2830亿美元的沙特塔达乌尔（Saudi Tadawul）信息披露标准差，对内幕交易态度松懈。今年8月，沙特阿拉伯监管机构资本市场管理局（capitalmarketsauthority）首次因内幕交易被判入狱。Bishah农业发展公司前董事长纳贾姆·艾哈迈德·纳贾姆·艾丁（Najam Eddin Ahmad Najam Eddin）因内幕交易Bishah股票被判处3个月监禁，并罚款10万里亚尔（约合26667美元）。

至少到目前为止，缺乏任何零售后果，至少到目前为止，也可以钝化改革努力。“我不相信丑闻将为企业治理的变革提供推动，与美国州的迪拜的监管和合规咨询公司的资本优势董事总经理莎朗德魁兰州。“它并没有影响普通人一样。Saad-Algosaibi问题更有限，不太透明，可能被银行利润和政府援助所涵盖。“

改革倡导者认为场景将代表巨大的失去机会。银行已经在Saad-Algosaibi Affair中丢失了数十亿美元。如果各国政府和监管机构未能制定合适的课程并采取治理改革，则该地区的损失可能会更高。