At the end of last year, the Political Bureau meeting of the CPC Central Committee instructed to “strengthen anti-monopoly and prevent disorderly expansion of capital” to stop private Internet financial institutions like Ant Financial from absorbing private deposit funds on all fronts.
By January this year, the results have met official expectations. After more than a year of continuous suppression, the structured deposits of state-owned banks returned to positive growth in the first month of 2021.
The latest data released by the central bank showed that the balance of structured deposits of Chinese banks in January 2021 was about 7.02 trillion yuan, an increase of 575.66 billion yuan compared with December 2020, with the increase turning from negative to positive, ending the previous trend of eight consecutive months of decline.
China Securities Times reporter analysis, the growth of structured deposits in the first month of this year showed two major features: first, the increase in structured deposits of large banks exceeded that of small and medium-sized banks for the first Time; second, compared with the slight change in individual structured deposits, the growth of unit structured deposits was more pronounced, and corporate purchases also drove a significant increase in structured deposits in the first month of this year.
Four major state-owned banks absorbed far more deposits than small banks
From the data, in terms of the increase of structured deposits in the first month of the year, large banks’ structured deposits grew significantly faster. The data shows that the structured deposits of small and medium-sized banks increased by 172.648 billion yuan in January this year, while large banks increased by 403.012 billion yuan, accounting for 70% of the total increase in the entire structured deposit balance, which is also the first time since statistics were available that the increase in structured deposits of large banks exceeded that of small and medium-sized banks in January.
On December 11, Beijing launched a number of measures to control private Internet financial institutions, and three days later, the General Administration of Market Supervision issued three anti-monopoly fines to Alibaba and Tencent, adding that “the Internet industry is not a place outside the anti-monopoly law”.
On December 15, the financial regulator also came forward – Sun Tianqi, director of the Financial Stability Bureau of the Central Bank of China, said publicly that the Internet platform deposit model is an illegal financial activity “driving without a license”.
Three days later, Ant Group announced that it had taken the initiative to remove the Internet deposit products from its platform. Jingdong Finance, Lufax and many other leading Internet financial platforms quickly followed suit and shelved their bank deposit products one after another.
On December 22, the consumer sector took over and continued its anti-monopoly. The General Administration of Market Supervision held an “administrative guidance meeting” to regulate the order of community group purchases, with Alibaba, Tencent, Jingdong, Meituan, Jindo, DDT and other Internet companies that have invested heavily in community group purchases this year attending the meeting.
On December 24, the central bank and other financial regulators announced another interview with Ant Group; at the same time, the General Administration of Market Supervision announced that it had opened an investigation into Alibaba’s alleged monopolistic practices.
And back in November, Ant Group’s listing plan in Hong Kong‘s Hong Kong Stock Exchange was called off, and Jack Ma and Ant executives were interviewed by mainland regulators one after another.
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