Big is bewitching. Before the crunch, the sheer size of some institutions was an encumbrance to rational analysis. As Chuck Prince or Sir Fred Goodwin celebrated double-digit growth in assets, few observers – least of all the respective boards of Citigroup and Royal Bank of Scotland – had the wit or inclination to mine reams of data for structural flaws.
做大是一件令人着迷的事情。金融危机之前，一些机构庞大的规模妨碍了理性分析。当查克·普林斯(Chuck Prince)和弗雷德·古德温爵士(Sir Fred Goodwin)为两位数的资产增长欢庆之际，罕有观察家具有那种头脑或意愿，从大量数据中寻找结构性缺陷——花旗(Citigroup)和苏格兰皇家银行(Royal Bank of Scotland)的分析师们尤其如此。
What, then, to make of Industrial & Commercial Bank of China, now the world's biggest bank by any metric you care to mention? No other lender comes close to the bank's net income of $5.2bn in the first quarter. Deposits of about $1,400bn have nudged past Japan's MUFG and JPMorgan, the bank said last week. Market capitalisation? A whisker away from $200bn. That's 60 per cent bigger than the nearest US outfit (JPMorgan), and 11 times bigger than Citi.
那么，该如何看待中国工商银行(ICBC)呢？无论以何种尺度衡量，它都是全球第一大银行。该行一季度实现净利润52亿美元，没有哪家银行堪与比肩。工行上周表示，其存款规模约为1.4万亿美元，略高于摩根大通(JPMorgan)和日本的三菱UFJ金融集团(MUFG)。市值情况呢？距2000亿美元仅咫尺之遥，比位居次席的美国银行（摩根大通)高出60%，比花旗高出11倍。
But while things seem tickety-boo on the surface – non-performing loans actually fell 2 per cent from the fourth quarter – trouble surely awaits. ICBC almost quadrupled loan volumes in the first quarter, year on year; number two, China Construction Bank, merely tripled them, while at Bank of China they doubled. Similar state-directed lending splurges in the 1990s left companies laden with capital equipment they barely needed, and too much debt. On Deutsche Bank estimates, China's stimulus actually needs less than $150bn of annual lending. ICBC supplied two-thirds of that in the first quarter alone. Loan growth is outpacing deposit growth by about 2.5 to 1.
虽然从表面上看，形势一片大好——工行的不良贷款率较去年第四季度实际下降了2%——但未来肯定会有麻烦。工行第一季度的贷款额接近去年同期的4倍；国内第二大银行——中国建设银行仅为去年同期的3倍，而中国银行则为2倍。上世纪90年代同样在国家指令下出现的信贷潮，曾令企业背负了大量基本不需要的资本设备，出现了过高负债。德意志银行(Deutsche Bank)估计，中国的经济刺激计划所需的年贷款额实际上低于1500亿美元。工行仅在第一季度就提供了其中的三分之二。贷款与存款的增长率之比为 2.5:1。
Still, China's loan-classification system gives lenders an unusually long period of grace before recognising losses. And the equity valuation is no great stretch: on just over 10 times next year's earnings, it is inexpensive both against Asian peers and its historical levels. While faith in China's ability to spend its way out of a slump endures, so should ICBC's grip on the top spot – however many bogeymen are lurking.
尽管如此，在中国的贷款分级制度下，银行在承认亏损前能享受一段长得超乎寻常的宽限期。与此同时，工行的股票估值也并不过分：仅略高于预期收益10倍，与其历史水平及亚洲同行相比，都可谓廉价。无论有多少“妖魔”潜伏其中，只要对于中国能够依靠投资摆脱衰退的信念不变，工行的排名就不会动摇。