Even though China’s presence in Africa had been growing rapidly, the October 2007 announcement that Industrial and Commercial Bank of China was buying a 20 percent stake in South Africa’s Standard Bank Group for $5.5 billion caused heads to turn. The deal marked the first major overseas venture by China’s largest bank and seemed to signal the start of an all-out Chinese assault on the African market and the continent’s rich mineral resources. ICBC chairman Jiang Jianqing raised expectations for a flurry of deals with Standard, saying, “We share the same vision on the globalization of the financial industry, and we have common interest in emerging markets.” Standard’s CEO, Jacko Maree, hailed the tie-up as “an enormous vote of confidence in South Africa and in Africa.”
然而，两年以上的伴随合作伙伴关系，这两家银行合作已经产生了非常适度的水果。迄今为止迄今为止唯一大量的交易，去年的ICBC和标准安排了博茨瓦纳16亿美元的电厂扩张融资。银行正在考虑融资或投资其他60岁左右的其他非洲矿业，能源，农业和基础设施项目可能价值数十亿美元，但到目前为止，中方推迟了任何决策。亚慱体育app怎么下载北京的标准银行中国首席执行官Craig邦德表示联合审查进程，“比我们预期的速度慢得多”。
凭借其245万亿美元的外汇储备及其对饲料工厂的自然资源贪婪的胃口，中国既涉嫌和担心世界潜在的群体作为交易制造商。贫困国家渴望参加中国的现金或基础设施发展的承诺，以获得石油和其他商品的回报，而许多发达国家担心可能导致中国实体的战略公司或资源丧失。但随着标准银行的经验表明，非洲地面的现实更加平淡无奇。中国可以比Juggernaut更多的官僚，凭借其大，等级企业经常慢慢做出决策。此外，北京的钱并不总是保证Entrée最好的交易。
In the past two years, state-owned Chinese companies have announced a string of deals or proposed projects in Africa, including investing $1.25 billion in Uganda for a third of the petroleum assets owned by the U.K.’s Tullow Oil, agreeing to finance and build a proposed $4 billion port in Kenya, undertaking $6 billion in infrastructure projects in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in exchange for rights to copper and cobalt deposits, and a tentative agreement to build up to $23 billion in oil refineries in Nigeria. Not all of these deals are sure to pan out, though. And in many cases, Chinese firms have had to settle for stakes in natural-resource deposits that long-established Western rivals have overlooked or sold off in favor of more accessible and secure sites. There is not a single instance in Africa in which the Chinese have outbid or outmaneuvered a leading Western mining or oil company for possession of world-class reserves. “In some cases, the Chinese are going after oil reserves that are considered too politically risky by other companies,” says Peter Jackson, London-based senior director of global consulting firm IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates.
A prime example is China’s most important African oil operation, in Sudan, a country that has been a pariah for Western governments and investors because of the massacres in its western region of Darfur and a separatist movement in its oil-producing south. Last year Sudan supplied China with 10 percent of its oil imports, or 785,000 barrels a day, according to the Journal of Energy Security. State-owned China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC) owns 40 percent of Sudan’s Greater Nile Petroleum Operating Co., a consortium whose other partners include Malaysia’s Petroliam Nasional Berhad (30 percent), India’s Oil and Natural Gas Corp. (25 percent) and Sudan’s state-owned Sudapet Co. (5 percent). CNPC has invested more than $8 billion in Sudan.
迄今为止，中国已获得仅限3％的非洲已知的石油和天然气储备;IHS剑桥的说法，国际石油公司，大约30％由国际石油公司控制，而剩下的67％是非洲政府持有的。
Nevertheless, China’s trade with Africa has grown rapidly, a reflection of its strong demand for commodities and its willingness to pay rising market prices. The country’s trade with Africa has jumped fivefold over the past decade, to $107 billion last year from $21 billion in 2000. By comparison, the European Union’s trade with Africa only doubled during the same period, though at $210 billion last year, it is still almost twice as large as China’s.
中国的中国人对未来的贸易和投资交易筹集了更高的期望，而不是南非，这是美国大陆最大的经济体。2009年，中国超越了美国和德国作为南非出口的最佳目的地，价值487亿兰特（62亿美元）。工商银行与标准之间的协议提出了更大的事情的希望。ICBC的市场资本化为2390亿美元，2009年净收入为189.5亿美元，是世界上最大的银行一定距离。虽然标准银行要小得多，但市场上限为214亿美元，净利润为10亿美元，银行是撒哈拉以南非洲的主要贷方。只有U.K.的标准特许和ABSA集团，英国的约翰内斯堡的武器，在该地区的比较方面具有可比的存在。
“使用标准银行帮助查找和金融投资的中国战略非常好，”约翰内斯堡的ABSA投资银行研究约翰内斯堡研究负责人Jeff Gable说。“他们自己不能这样做。”
Standard had discussed possible cooperation with ICBC for several years. Then, during a June 2007 visit to Cape Town for an international financial conference, ICBC’s Jiang Jianqing slipped away for a day with Maree to negotiate the outline terms of an ICBC stake in Standard. The deal was completed in March 2008. ICBC bought half of its 20 percent stake from Standard shareholders at R136 a share and the rest by paying R104.58 a share for new stock issued by Standard, effectively boosting the South African bank’s capital by $2 billion and raising its tier-1 capital ratio to 11.2 percent of assets from 10.4 percent.
The timing was fortuitous. “It gave us a very strong capital and liquidity position going into the global crisis,” says Maree.
The ICBC-Standard alliance got off to a quick start with the announcement of a May 2009 deal for an $825 million, 20-year loan to finance the $1.6 billion expansion of a state-owned coal-powered plant, known as Morupule B, in eastern Botswana. ICBC provided the financing, while Standard took charge of the structuring of the loan, as well as the currency and risk hedging. The interest rate of the loan was not disclosed.
这是中国武器和南非专业知识的典型例子。南非在2008年宣布的能源短缺，于2008年宣布，到2012年将停止向邻近博茨瓦纳出口电力。为了掩盖外国公司呼吁国有公司的提案，以资助Morupule项目，这涉及安装四个150兆瓦的燃煤单位。标准银行在博茨瓦纳运营多年，并充分了解该国即将发生的能源短缺。合并的工商银行标准出价赢得了法国，印度和马来西亚的建议。作为该交易的一部分，两家银行还将提供1.4亿美元的桥梁贷款，而国有的中国国民电气设备公司之一ICBC的顶级企业客户，将在9.7亿美元的合同下建造大部分电站。
According to Maree, Standard had not sought to participate in the Botswana project before its alliance with ICBC. Without the Chinese bank as a partner, “we would not have been able to undertake the funding of a project of this scale,” he says. ICBC officials sound just as pleased. “The value that Standard Bank brings to ICBC in the financing of the Morupule project is its regional and sector knowledge,” George Liu Jianchang, ICBC’s Beijing-based deputy manager for project and trade finance, wrote in an e-mail to Institutional Investor. The Chinese banker went on to point out that ICBC’s deep pockets allowed the deal to go forward “at a time when banks around the world are cutting back on international lending and concentrating on domestic lending in the wake of the global financial crisis and government bail-outs in 2009.”
But since winning the Botswana contract, the two banks have made no deals of comparable significance in Africa, and Standard executives concede their frustration. “China has the capital and patience and is in a very strong negotiating position,” says Bond, the head of Standard’s operations in China. “It means getting things done can take time.”
标准在北京有40名银行家，几乎所有的中国出生和外商受过良好教育，在全球投资银行经验。他们每周与他们的工商银行同行会面，以讨论所谓的“工作流”的特定项目。这个想法是对工商银行官员彻底熟悉潜在的项目和标准对应物。其他活动有资源银行，企业银行，投资银行和信息技术的工作流。例如，资源银行包括涉及珍贵和基础金属的潜在商品贸易交易的长期会议。工作流可以继续几个月，最终在标准的Maree和工商银行在杨波生队之间的正式会议上，在标准的董事会席位。那会议可以 - 或者可能不是 - 绿光一个项目。“我们认为2010年作为交易和其他交易方面的一个非常好的一年，”希望有望。
So far this year, however, Standard executives can cite only three deals stemming from their bank’s link with ICBC. In March the two banks extended $400 million in loans to refinance the debt of the Lumwana copper mine in Zambia owned by Equinox Minerals, a Canadian-Australian company. A second deal, also in March, involved an undisclosed amount of trade financing to enable the Ghana Cocoa Board to finance its annual crop.
Separately, ICBC facilitated a deal between Standard and China UnionPay, China’s bank-card association, to allow Chinese tourists in South Africa — many are expected to visit for the World Cup competition, from June 11 to July 11 — to use Standard’s ATMs for cash withdrawals and payments.
虽然标准仍然乐观，但今年可以谈判更多，更大的交流，南非银行可以将南非银行能够与其市场资本化11倍的合作伙伴带来压力。“工商银行目前的业务与我们很小 - 会计条款的舍入误差，”中国首席债券表示。对于标准来说，希望是，工商银行迅速完成非洲的学习曲线，并决定出价在讨论下的一些60多个优惠。这些包括标准识别的潜在基础设施项目约为170亿美元。如果工商银行同意，这两家银行就可以出价大部分。“并非所有人都会选择我们的联盟，一些大型项目将永远不会发生，”邦德说。“但非洲对基础设施的需求更新现在显然就在议程上。”据债券介绍，最有可能使若干非洲国家的煤动力电厂的三个或四项，每个成本均超过10亿美元。
Infrastructure deals linked to natural-resource projects are a key part of Chinese investment strategy in Africa. They have also raised the specter of China Inc. — Western rivals and multinational agencies allege that Chinese firms and the Beijing government are cooperating closely, sometimes unethically, to snatch African contracts from competitors. The most recent controversial case involved the $9 billion minerals-for-infrastructure deal signed in 2008 between a consortium of Chinese companies and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Decades of war, corruption and economic mismanagement have reduced the mineral-rich nation to the unenviable status of sub-Saharan Africa’s poorest country.
协议呼吁中国修建道路, railways and hospitals in exchange for copper and cobalt ore from a mine they will develop. But the deal raised objections from the International Monetary Fund and the Paris Club of creditors, which contended that the project violated the terms of an aid package from these Western donors to enable Congo to service its $11 billion foreign debt. So last August the Chinese consortium agreed to reduce its Congo deal to $6 billion, with the Beijing government cutting $3 billion in infrastructure spending.
But some form of China Inc. remains the modus operandi across the continent. “Unlike the West, the Chinese economic development model in Africa is one with a lot of state involvement,” says Deborah Brautigam, author of The Dragon’s Gift, a book published in 2009 that traces China’s growing role in Africa. “They try to protect and promote their companies.”
这在安哥拉,表现得尤为明显year overtook Nigeria as the largest oil producer in sub-Saharan Africa. In 2004, just two years after the end of Angola’s 27-year civil war, the Export-Import Bank of China extended a $2 billion low-interest loan to that virtually bankrupt African nation to finance infrastructure projects to be built mainly by Chinese companies. At the time, Royal Dutch Shell, which operates in the Atlantic waters off Angola, put up for sale its 50 percent stake in an offshore drilling area. India’s ONGC was expected to buy the stake. But the national Angolan oil company, Sonangol Group, exercised its preemptive rights to the area and refused to allow the deal. Instead, Shell sold to China Petroleum and Chemical Corp., or Sinopec, for $1.68 billion. “There is a widespread consensus that Sinopec would not have gotten that stake if China Eximbank hadn’t lent that money to Angola,” says Erica Downs, a specialist in Chinese energy at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. According to Downs, additional Chinese state loan commitments to Angola undermined efforts by the IMF to ensure that the country spent its oil wealth transparently in return for IMF aid.
Such mounting criticism led Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao to defend his nation’s economic policies at a China-Africa summit in Egypt last November, where he also announced $10 billion in new low-interest loans to the continent over the next three years. “There have been allegations for a long time that China has come to Africa to plunder its resources and practice neocolonialism,” Wen said at a news conference. “In my view, this is completely untenable.”
虽然自我克制和外界批评的结合创造了逆风，但在非洲的大量投资中，中国的膨胀贸易没有任何东西可以减缓。国际矿业大会在开普敦每年举行的国际矿业大会，中国贸易和投资两月都是2月份的关注中心。参加Indaba的许多专家指出，非洲的中国采矿业务仍处于早期阶段，目前没有明显的生产。“如果中国人想要对矿石用品和价格产生更多影响，他们将要进入主要的现有运营，”瑞典矿业咨询公司原材料集团或RMG联合创始人Magnus爱立信表示。“到目前为止，在非洲没有发生过。”
但在伊顿的斯坦纳贬低中国对矿石贸易影响的巨大影响。一个案例是kumba铁矿石，这是英国英国南非矿业巨头的64％。Kumba在世界上第五个铁矿石供应商之一，在苏希尔岛生产昂贵的高档矿石，约翰内斯堡西南约600英里。Kumba只是非洲矿业财产，中国人想要拥有 - 如果只是出售。“南非矿业公司是世界一流的贸易，世界级倍数，”ABSA的山墙说。“在这里，这里没有容易获胜，如中国投资者可以在刚果或加纳找到。”
中国has emerged not as a predatory investor but as Kumba’s white knight of trade. The global recession walloped Kumba’s traditional markets in Europe, Japan and South Korea, whose combined share of the company’s exports dropped from 57 percent in 2008 to only 25 percent last year. China more than made up for this swoon by accounting for 75 percent of Kumba’s ore exports in 2009, compared with 43 percent the year before. “The iron ore market for 2009 was really a tale of two regions: China and the rest of the steel-producing world,” said Chris Griffith, Kumba’s CEO, in announcing the company’s results in February. Thanks to Chinese demand, instead of plunging into loss, Kumba had 2009 net income of R6.96 billion, down only 4 percent from R7.28 billion in 2008.
中国’s rising appetite for African ore has also excited local portfolio investors. Alex Pestana, an investment strategist at Sanlam Investment Management, one of South Africa’s largest financial services firms, began traveling to China in 2004 to gauge the country’s soaring demand for iron, copper, cobalt and other ore. But Pestana, based in Bellville, an eastern suburb of Cape Town, decided to forgo direct investments in Chinese state-controlled entities for now in favor of an indirect China play through such Western mining companies as BHP Billiton and Anglo American. “These companies’ fortunes are largely determined by commodity prices, and the margins are dependent on Chinese demand,” says Pestana. “But certainly, as Chinese companies become more important players in Africa, I can see we will be taking a bigger exposure in them.”
That is Standard’s bet as well. But the South African bank isn’t just waiting for its partnership with ICBC to pay off in Africa. Last year Standard estimated that most of the $78 million in new revenues generated by its alliance with ICBC actually came from advisory fees and trade financing for large companies headquartered in China. Through introductions from ICBC, says Bond, Standard “has developed good relations with our targeted top 50 companies in China.”
Aided by ICBC, Standard last year signed a $1 billion loan deal for five years at an undisclosed interest rate with four major Chinese banks: Bank of China, China Citic Bank Corp., China Development Bank and ICBC (Macau). Standard will use the money for daily management of its liquidity and balance sheet.
资本提高标准了from ICBC’s purchase of its 20 percent stake has allowed the Johannesburg bank to look beyond South Africa and China for new investments without its Chinese partner. In March 2009, Standard used a $200 million convertible loan to purchase a 33 percent stake in Troika Dialog, Russia’s second-largest investment bank. And back in Africa, Standard is hoping to expand its footprint. “We are looking at a number of troubled Nigerian banks to see if they offer us an opportunity to further increase our operations there,” says Maree. “Of course, you can never rule out the possibility of coming across something really big.”
But that kind of opportunity will require the financial clout of a partner like ICBC.