As QE2 Sets Sail, Bond Rally Sinks

• By MATT PHILLIPS And MIN ZENG

Just as the Federal Reserve is about to step away from the market, the months-long Treasurys rally is showing signs of pulling back.

For the third consecutive session, Treasury investors on Wednesday balked at buying new bonds at a large government-debt auction, sending prices lower and yields higher.

The yield on the benchmark 10-year note reached 3.11%, its highest since May 25. Yields on the 10-year note have risen every day this week, adding about 0.24 percentage point since Friday and sparking speculation that the bull run in the bond market may have passed its peak.

The Treasurys on sale on Wednesday were $29 billion of seven-year notes. That followed sales of two- and five-year notes, all of them showing low levels of demand in the private sector and among foreign buyers.
The poorly received auctions raised eyebrows ahead of Thursday's official finish of the Federal Reserve's second bond-buying initiative, a $600 billion "quantitative easing" program widely known as QE2.

And some see signs that the 20 primary dealers, who trade directly with the Federal Reserve and are obligated to bid on Treasury bond auctions, are getting gun shy about bidding aggressively in auctions, knowing the Fed won't be there as a guaranteed buyer to take unwanted Treasurys off their hands.

 

Since QE2 began, the Fed has bought about 85% of the net Treasury issuance over the past eight months or so, according to Morgan Stanley economists. Above, the Treasury Building is Washington, D.C.

 

"It's really the dealer community who, to some degree, is stuck absorbing that extra supply in Treasurys," said Fidelio Tata, head of U.S. interest-rate strategy at Société Générale in New York. "And they're not happy about it."

And there will be plenty of extra supply to swallow.

Since QE2 began, the Fed has bought about 85% of the net Treasury issuance over the past eight months or so, according to Morgan Stanley economists.

In each of the first six months of this year, the Fed bought all but $17 billion of the Treasurys sold by the government, J.P. Morgan estimates. Once QE2 ends, private buyers will be forced to soak up $94 billion a month.

"In order to get the private sector to absorb that supply, it's going to take a concession. It's going to take higher yields," said Terry Belton, global head of fixed income strategy at J.P. Morgan.

The Fed isn't taking the training wheels completely off just yet. The central bank will continue to buy Treasurys with the proceeds from repayments on the remaining mortgage-backed and Treasury debt it owns. With interest rates at current levels, Bank of America Merrill Lynch estimates that will result in about $15 billion worth of Fed buying a month. But that pales in comparison to the size of Fed purchasing in recent months.

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The Fed ends QE2 as a bigger holder of Treasurys than China, according to Treasury and Fed data, owning roughly 17% of U.S. marketable debt.

In a speech in February, Brian Sack, executive vice president of the markets group at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, said that QE2 involved the Fed buying "more Treasury securities than the amount currently held by the entire U.S. commercial banking system."

"The Fed was the largest source of duration demand since November last year, so it's extremely important," said Priya Misra, head of U.S. rates strategy at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. "The big question is: What is the buyer that steps in? And at what price?"

Besides the looming end of QE2, signs of Greece being able to avoid a default next month pushed many investors to unload safe-haven Treasurys in favor of stocks.

"But the Greek and the euro-zone debt problems are far from being solved,'' said Michael Franzese, head of Treasury trading at Wunderlich Securities in New York. "I am buying on 'dips' here. I don't think the bull run in Treasurys is over yet, though selling dominates in the short term in the overbought market."

In late-afternoon trading, the benchmark 10-year note was down 18/32 points, pushing the yield up to 3.110%. The 30-year bond was down 21/32 to yield 4.372%. The two-year note was up 2/32 points to yield 0.469%.
Write to Matt Phillips at matt.phillips@wsj.com and Min Zeng at min.zeng@dowjones.com

经济学家曝中国近10年经济政策的主要错误

经济学家曝中国近10年经济政策的主要错误
凯迪 2011-06-27 18:49:39

　　当前中国陷入了高通货膨胀、贫富严重分化、社会对立、矛盾激化的危险状态。这些社会问题的根源与经济发展方向和路线的失误有关。反思中国近10年来经济方针及政策的重大错误盖有：

　　一、不顾一切地发展私营经济，不惜代价地实行私有化，不仅极大地损害了普通劳动者们的利益，扩大了收入分配上的差距，而且造成了大量国有资产被侵吞，极大地损害了中国人民的利益。为了将中国的国有银行私有化，借口“在银行股份化改造中引进战略投资者”，以惊人的低价将中国大型银行的股权“卖”给外国金融机构，使中国人民的财产至少损失1万亿元

　　实行权贵私有化的“国有企业产权改革攻坚”，不顾原国有企业职工的反对以“卖”为名将国有企业低价送给私人，以致引发了以2009年通化钢铁公司上万职工抗争为标志的群众性反抗事件;为了发展私营企业，以“解决中小企业贷款难”问题为借口，极力向没有长期经营能力的私营企业输送贷款，为此而阻挠为防止通货膨胀所必需的信贷紧缩，造成并加剧了通货膨胀;把使房地产商和少数投机倒卖城市住宅者暴富作为政策目标，借口增加私人所有的住宅，竭尽全力地扩大各种以私人住宅为抵押的银行信贷，造成了城市住宅售价的暴涨和空前的房地产泡沫。

　　二、不切实际地追求过高的经济增长率，过度扩张名义总需求，一再造成经济过热和通货膨胀，使中国再次面临停滞膨胀的威胁。这种倾向明显地表现在2003年以后。中国每年潜在产量的增长率没有超过10%

　　在2002年以后，为了达到年平均超过10%的经济增长，过度增大货币供应量，刺激经济在短期中过快增长，以致2007出现了过热期都罕见的14%的过高增长，使中国的实际产出由低于潜在产出变为显著高于潜在产出，导致 2008年出现了显著的通货膨胀。由于不愿将过高的经济增长率真正降到长期可持续的水平

　　2008年为制止通货膨胀所作的紧缩中途夭折，很快就借口“抵御美国金融危机的冲击”而转向肆无忌惮地扩张总需求，将2009年银行信贷余额的增长率提高到在高通货膨胀期也少见的30%的水平，以致过快增长的货币存量导致2010年中国的经济增长率显著高于潜在产出的增长，使中国的实际产出重新变为显著高于潜在产出，造成了2011年的严重而且很难下降的通货膨胀。这种追求过高经济增长率的过度扩张总需求政策，正在将中国一步步拉向1987年之后的10年中国所陷入的那种类似停滞膨胀的困境之中。

　　三、承袭了30年来将一切融资行为都信贷化的错误倾向，拒绝通过以金融手段统筹运营国有资产来对整个经济进行调节，不注重发展依据私人和法人信用的票据贴现以真正满足工商业实体的融资需求，而是尽可能膨胀信贷，单纯依靠增加银行贷款来扩大宏观总需求，支撑企业特别是私营企业的融资需求。

　　其结果是一方面造成了带根本性的流动性过剩，导致股票市场、房地产市场和许多资产市场甚至一般产品的交易中都出现了惊人的泡沫，售价暴涨暴跌，极大地增加了整个经济的不稳定，直至造成了通货膨胀;形成惊人泡沫的城市住宅售价窒息了真正出于居住动机的居民居住需求，造成了资源配置的扭曲和人民福利的损失

　　另一方面，信贷交易的劣根性使无论如何膨胀的信贷规模都无法减轻穷人借款的利息负担，反而由于信贷融资的恶性扩展而形成了强大的高利贷利益集团，正在将整个中国经济导向窒息产业发展的高利贷经济，而高利贷经济正是人类社会制度中最无耻、最黑暗的制度之一。

　　四、听信西方骗人的“自由贸易”谎言，荒唐地追求实行“贸易自由化”，拒不实行坚决保护本国产业的贸易保护政策，不仅错误地坚持履行加入WTO时所作的损害中国长远利益的各种承诺，而且被诱骗在“贸易自由化”的自残道路上越走越远，甚至还要与产业竞争力远远强于中国的日本、韩国搞什么“大东亚共荣圈”式的“自由贸易区”。

　　这种“贸易自由化”的努力表面上换得了短期内对外贸易和贸易顺差的高增长，却付出了支出巨额的出口退税、长期保持人民币对美元低汇率等等招致中国人民受外国巨大剥削的昂贵代价，还导致西方以中国的巨额贸易顺差为借口用贸易制裁相威胁，使中国最终必须以开放国内市场、增加进口的方式降低贸易顺差，从而最终实现了“贸易自由化”所要求的放弃对国内产业的保护。

　　这一整个被西方人以“贸易自由化”来摆布的过程，导致中国最近十年有高速的经济增长而无实质性的产业升级。20世纪80年代中国还可以靠高关税保护奠定家庭小汽车生产的基础并以本国产品占据了国内家用电器市场，而最近10年的贸易政策却使中国的民用产品升级换代全面停滞，以致每年进口液晶平板400亿美元，进口芯片1200亿美元，进口芯片金额超过进口的石油、铁矿石等任何矿产的金额

　　这样下去，不但中国将永远停留于低工资的不发达国家水平，而且中国的高速经济增长也不可能长期持续下去。

　　五、继续近30年来实行的优待外资挤垮中国民族产业的错误政策，纵容甚至鼓励外资抢占中国的投资机会，扼杀中国的民族产业。为了讨外国政府和外资企业欢心，连中国政府的采购都不敢对中国的自主创新产品实行优惠，外资企业在中国成了中国政府法律法规不敢管的特权太上皇。

　　在这样的纵容下，外资企业已经在中国国内的许多产业中占据优势，中国的市场成了像美国的通用汽车这样濒于破产的外资企业最后的赚钱天堂。特别是中国国内的新兴技术密集产业，如家用小汽车、手机和计算机行业的生产，都被外资企业所主导，外资企业产品、外资品牌在这些产业中占据了统治地位。

　　外资企业占据中国的高附加值产业，导致中国民族产业没有足够的投资机会，在国内实体经济部门的投资不足，大量资金通过中国政府的外汇储备外流，从而形成了历史上罕见的极其荒唐的国内外资金对流：中国一方面每年净流入近2千亿美元的私人资本

　　另一方面，每年又通过政府外汇储备的增加流出约4千亿美元;流入的外资年平均利润率10%以上，流到国外的中国外汇储备年增值(利息率)等不到5%，而且还往往面临血本无归的危险。过多的外汇储备造成了基础货币过多、货币存量过大而造成金融泡沫和通货膨胀的巨大压力，并迫使中国的货币当局不断发行“中央银行票据”、将准备率提高到惊人的高度，彻底扭曲了中国的货币金融体系。

　　六、放弃必要的实物性和产业性经济计划，导致中国的经济发展结构扭曲。由于拒绝制订和实行有约束力的整体产业发展计划并以金融手段统筹运营国有资产来保障执行计划的资金

　　中国的产业结构已经极度扭曲，个别年份净出口和住宅建筑投资占GDP的比重已经达到15%以上(住宅投资完成额加净出口占GDP的比重，2008年为13.6%，2009年为11.3%)，为美国这个百分比的3倍;同时，中国的军事工业落后导致的军事装备落后的状况仍未有根本的改观;中国科学技术的研究和开发仍然徘徊在很低的水平上，少数达到先进水平的研发成果也很难转化为企业化的生产

　　中国自主的装备制造业还需要在生产和研发上投入大量资金;大多数民族产业和企业离世界先进水平都还有很大差距，需要给予大量的投入和大力的扶植;为进一步发展为真正的高收入国家，需要进行巨额的投资来发展产业以替代当前巨额进口的各种高技术产品，所有这些又都要求在这些方面投入巨大的生产能力。

　　不将中国的生产能力投入到这些真正提升国家经济实力的方面，而逼迫它们为外国人生产将来可能没有什么真正的回报的出口产品、造被当成金融资产倒卖而不供人居住的住宅，这是最大的资源配置扭曲，而这样的资源配置扭曲，根源在于拒绝制订和实行有约束力的整体产业发展计划并以金融手段统筹运营国有资产来保障执行计划的资金。

　　在中国三十年经济开放过程中，形形色色和大大小小的利益集团，在不同的层面上，以不同的手段，在攫取着改革的成果，危害着民众的利益，孕育着社会动荡，侵蚀着政权的基础。而其中，得利最巨大、手段最隐蔽、勾结最紧密、持续最长久的莫过于中国的涉外金融利益集团。

　　目前中国所有被毙、被抓、被双规的贪官，其金额和罪责加起来，恐怕都难以与这一利益集团相比拟。更为重要的是，在重大和长远利益的驱动下，这一涉外金融利益集团长期经营、盘根错结、相互提携、内外呼应、朝野相随、利益均沾，成为左右中国经济，危害国家安全，影响中国政局，在国际上有能量呼风唤雨的一股重大势力。

Wall Street Wielding the Ax

Wall Street Wielding the Ax

By AARON LUCCHETTI And LIZ RAPPAPORT

The trading slump on Wall Street has battered profits and is about to cost some people their jobs.

Credit Suisse Group AG started laying off investment-banking employees Tuesday, and the cost-cutting push could claim 400 to 600 jobs, according to people familiar with the situation.

This month, Barclays PLC has eliminated 100 jobs in its investment bank, including some stock-trading employees. The latest cuts are on top of 600 layoffs in January, a person familiar with the situation said.

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Wes Duvall for The Wall Street Journal
.And at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., the annual survival-of-the-fittest culling of 5% of the securities firm's employees won't be enough in 2011, according to someone familiar with the New York company's plans.

Deeper cutbacks will be made throughout Goldman, this person said, especially in the U.S. Goldman still plans to add more employees in Singapore, Brazil and India.

"Banks are chopping a lot of wood, both deadwood and live wood," said Michael Karp, managing partner at executive-search and consulting firm Options Group.

The cutbacks are coming largely because of sluggish revenue growth on Wall Street's trading desks.

Regulators have clamped down on trading strategies that once generated huge profits but then backfired with staggering losses during the financial crisis.

Meanwhile, bread-and-butter trading clients from hedge-fund managers to mom-and-pop investors are doing less buying and selling, depriving firms of commissions and fees.

"There's definitely apprehension," said Roger Freeman, an analyst with Barclays Capital. On a recent visit with Goldman, Mr. Freeman discussed with executives how some hedge funds with small trading gains preferred to lock in those gains from earlier this year rather than risk losing them on new trades.‬‪

Howard Marks, chairman of Oaktree Capital Management LP, which manages more than $80 billion in assets for pension funds and other investors, told clients in a letter last month that "other people's increasingly aggressive behavior tells me to seek cover."

Lots of other investors are heading for the sidelines. Average daily trading on U.S. stock exchanges slipped in the second quarter to its lowest level since 2007's fourth quarter, according to Barclays Capital.

Average daily trading volume of 7.16 billion shares was down 31% from 2010's second quarter and 10% since this year's first quarter.

Corporate bond-trading volume has fallen 14% in the second quarter from a year earlier, according to the Federal Reserve. Currency trading at CME Group Inc. is down 11%, while U.S. stock-options volume slipped about 1% as of June 21, Barclays Capital said.

Also hurting is the lucrative and risky over-the-counter derivatives business, in which Wall Street firms used borrowed money to supersize bets. And fresh declines in mortgage-related securities are adding even more pain.

As a result, major Wall Street firms are projected to generate $180 billion in revenue for the first six months of 2011, according to FactSet. That would be a 10% decline from the first half of last year.

Wall Street's Slowdown

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..Full-year earnings at Goldman and Morgan Stanley are on pace to be less than half of their precrisis peaks. Analysts have cut second-quarter earnings estimates for financial firms with large trading operations, including Goldman, Morgan Stanley and Citigroup Inc.

For months, many firms have been hunkering down for the new lower-octane, lower-risk, lower-return environment that followed the crisis.

Bank of America Corp. and other firms have closed down proprietary-trading desks that made big bets with their company's capital but are endangered by last year's Dodd-Frank law, which eventually bans such trading desks.

Many Wall Street executives hoped to offset such problems by wringing more revenue out of client trading, asset management and other customer-focused businesses.

But the flow of money into stock mutual funds turned negative in recent weeks. Brokerage firms such as E*Trade Financial Corp. have noted slower trading activity among individual investors.

Average daily trading volume by E*Trade customers fell 3.7% between April and May. In another sign of caution, E*Trade customers had $26.5 billion in cash in their accounts in May, up 33% from last year.

Wall Street executives said job cuts are unavoidable, though they still are hoping for a trading rebound.

At Credit Suisse, which has about 20,000 employees in its global investment bank, the cuts are expected to target slower-expanding businesses and underperformers.

"We continue to be proactive about monitoring the size of our business relative to client opportunities and market conditions," a Credit Suisse spokeswoman said in a statement. "This involves…adjusting capacity to meet client needs and to manage costs across the business."

Morgan Stanley recently indicated that it might let the number of brokers at its Morgan Stanley Smith Barney joint venture slip below 17,500. That is the low end of its previous target range.

Goldman plans to cut about $1 billion in expenses by mid-2012. That would represent a 10% reduction in noncompensation costs, targeting everything from car services to business meals and stationery, said a person familiar with the matter.

Citigroup, which hasn't announced broad layoffs, recently let go one of its co-heads on the commercial-paper desk, Matt Taormina. Mr. Taormina declined to comment.

The move came because Citigroup realized it didn't need two senior employees to lead the group, even though the bank has one of the largest commercial-paper desks on Wall Street, said a person familiar with the matter.

Pay consultants expect bonuses to tumble if revenue doesn't pick up steam the rest of the year. That likely would mean trouble for parts of the New York economy that rely on big spenders.

In New York's residential real-estate market, "we've seen some tailing off, but the market has performed better than 2009 and 2010," said Donna Olshan, president of Olshan Realty in New York.

According to the firm, 17 residential real-estate contracts for properties exceeding $4 million were signed in New York last week, down from 22 the previous week.

In Manhattan's Tribeca neighborhood, a new Maserati dealership set a monthly record with 23 sales of the Italian luxury car in April. Sales have slipped to about 15 cars so far this month, said Peter Lehmann, a sales consultant at the dealership.

Write to Aaron Lucchetti at aaron.lucchetti@wsj.com and Liz Rappaport at liz.rappaport@wsj.com

中国资本市场的倒金字塔还悬在空中

中国资本市场的倒金字塔还悬在空中

　　年届二十的中国资本市场迅猛发展，成为了全球第二大资本市场，祁斌认为我们也必须正视市场中存在的诸多问题，以及和美国等发达市场的差距，必须加快发展和改革的步伐。祁斌尤其提到了"倒金字塔型"的市场结构。

　　比如，纽约交易所上市公司有2000多家，纳斯达克是3000多家，OTCBB是将近4000多家，底下有一个灰色市场6万家，下面还有一个巨大的市场。它的机构是一个巨大的金字塔，落在塔尖的就是纽交所和纳斯达克。

　　"我们正好相反。"祁斌说，国内主板是1300多家，中小板500多家，创业板只有200多家了，还有代办转让系统100家，这是个倒金字塔，"底下就没了。所以我们的倒金字塔还悬在空中，底下连个腿都没有。"

　　说合理也是对的，"因为美国是自下而上发展起来的，我们是自上而下。"但祁斌也提出，"你有没有听说过一个国家，博士后和博士特别多，就是没有小学生和中学生？这种情况从长远来看是非常不合理的。""所以我们要加快场外交易市场即OTC的发展。"

　　而债市和股市、金融衍生品之间的差异则更不合理。祁斌提出，全世界范围内，债券市场的规模是股市的两倍，我们国家的债权市场是股市的一半；还有全球规模巨大的金融衍生品，我国现在刚刚才有了第一个(指股指期货)。"

　　不合理结构还发生在中国经济结构中的"剩男剩女现象"。"一方面有成千上万的企业等着排队、等着融资IPO。一方面成千上万的老百姓背着一麻袋一麻袋的钱买房子，因为找不着投资工具投资方向。"祁斌说，也是因为缺乏一个中介机制，这就需要资本市场提供一个解决方案。

　　"现在，钱已经成了中国社会的一个危害。老百姓害怕游资、害怕通胀，背后的原因是什么？"祁斌认为，是因为一个国家经济发展到达了一定的阶段，资金积累也到达了一定的程度。如果金融市场的发展跟不上的话，那么这些资金不仅不能帮助实体经济发展，还会带来巨大的危害。

　　"8万红军过湘江，前面只有一个浮桥，怎么办呢？"祁斌提出，第一，拓宽这座浮桥。发行体制市场化改革。第二，再架三座浮桥。第一个是债券市场、第二个是PE市场，第三个是OTC，这是中国资本市场另外三项重要工作。然后几万大军过去了，这个桥缺乏支撑了怎么办？长期资金参与，长期机构投资者的发展。必须把中国的养老体系、中国的社会保障体系跟资本市场的发展结合在一起，这就是中国资本市场的第五项工作。还剩下什么？期货市场发展、资本市场国际化、上市公司并购。这就是在未来若干年中，中国资本市场能发生的最重要的八件事情。

Greek Debt Talks Widen

Greek Debt Talks Widen

By STEPHEN FIDLER in Brussels, DAVID GAUTHIER-VILLARS in Paris and ALESSANDRA GALLONI in Rome

Talks about how to get private investors to contribute toward a new bailout for Greece widened Monday to include a possible buyback of Greek government bonds—but people at a meeting in Rome discussing the issue said there were no guarantees the ideas wouldn't lead to a default by the heavily indebted nation.

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European Pressphoto Agency

People from the Communist union PAME protest on the Acropolis hill in Athens on Monday.
.The Rome meeting was the first gathering of Greece's official and private creditors, together with Greek government officials, since the country's debt crisis began more than 18 months ago. Greece was promised €110 billion ($156.08 billion) in aid last year from the International Monetary Fund and European Union, the first of three bailouts to euro-zone nations. But that money won't be enough to finance it until mid-2013 as originally planned.

The efforts to get a meaningful private-sector contribution to a fresh bailout, as demanded by Germany and other euro-zone governments, face a tight deadline.

Finance ministers from the rest of the 17-nation euro zone are to discuss a new Greek rescue on Sunday—assuming the Greek parliament agrees to a package of austerity measures this week. Governments are trying to reduce the amount they need to lend to Greece by seeking a framework of how to prevent investors in Greek government bonds just cashing bonds as they come due.

People familiar with the discussions said the meeting's main focus was provided by an "umbrella proposal" by French banks to reinvest 50% of Greek government bonds that mature in the next three years into new 30-year bonds. A further 20% would be set aside to provide guarantees of ultimate repayment—and holders of the bonds would expect to benefit from higher returns if Greece's economy performs well.

The assets would be managed by what is known as a special-purpose vehicle, which would let investors remove the bonds from their balance sheets.

WSJ's Stephen Fidler has the details behind France's plan to reinvest proceeds from Greek government bonds in an effort to keep bondholders from rushing for the exits. Photo: REUTERS/John Kolesidis
.French President Nicolas Sarkozy backed the plan Monday, saying it "makes for a system which is, without a doubt, interesting for all countries."

He told a press conference in Paris: "The idea is that we won't let down Greece and that we'll defend the euro, which is in the interest of us all."

The French government is seeking the participation of private investment funds in the plan to get near the target of rolling over at least €30 billion of the €64 billion in Greek government bonds that come due in the next three years. It's not clear how it will be achieved.

According to people familiar with the matter, European Central Bank officials are receptive to the French proposal, assuming private-sector participation is voluntary.

The ECB has taken a hard-line public stance against any private-sector participation that would result in a default rating for Greece.

Under the Umbrella
French banks proposed:

Bondholders reinvest 50% of proceeds from maturing Greek bonds in new 30-year bonds.
Bondholders also set aside 20% of proceeds to buy top-rated zero-coupon bonds to guarantee capital repayment.
If the Greek economy grows faster than expected, investors get higher yield.
Special-purpose vehicle, controlled by the private creditors, would manage assets, allowing investors to remove Greek assets from their balance sheets.
Source: WSJ Research
."The situation can arise when private-sector involvement in [the next Greek bailout] is characterized by ratings agencies as selective default," Jürgen Stark, a hawkish German board member, said in a speech in Hamburg on Monday.

He said that under such circumstances, the ECB couldn't accept Greek bonds as collateral, a move that would create a crisis for Greek banks dependent on ECB liquidity.

However, officials appear open to an arrangement whereby banks would voluntarily agree to purchase new Greek debt when existing bonds mature, suggesting that a compromise along the lines of what France is proposing may be acceptable to the ECB.

The French plan wasn't the only one under discussion, and some said it needed adjustment, including the possibility that rolling guarantees should be provided for a year or two of interest payments.

One participant said it and related proposals were like "a self-financing Brady Plan," referring to the late-1980s initiative to dig Latin America out of its debt crisis. Under the original idea, the borrowing governments financed guarantees. Under the French plan, that's being done by the creditors.

Europe Debt Crisis
Greek Bond Buybacks Discussed at Meeting
Ackermann: Greece Debt Plan Needs Work
France Wants Funds to Join Rollover
Earlier: Push for Private Help for Greece
Heard: Germany's Gift to Euro Integration
ECB's Stark Warns on Debt Restructure
.People involved in the Rome discussions says there is no guarantee that the proposals under discussion wouldn't trigger a default call by the rating firms, which are looking for signs of creditors getting a raw deal, even if they enter into it voluntarily.

"There isn't a recipe that guarantees anything. We're skating on thin ice," said a person familiar with the discussions. "What we're trying to do is minimize the risks."

Rating firms aren't part of the discussions, reflecting their sensitivity to criticism that they got too involved in structuring toxic financial products that worsened to 2008 financial crisis.

The talks also included proposals to buy longer-dated Greek bonds in the market at a discount to face value, said a second person at the meeting.

This idea, unlike others presented at the meeting, would reduce the amount of Greek debt outstanding, and could possibly be financed by funds from European governments, the IMF or from the sale of businesses and other assets owned by the Greek government.

Some in the meeting argued that buyback proposal "had the potential to change market dynamics for Greece" by cutting its debt burden, according to the second person at the meeting.

Experience WSJ professional Editors' Deep Dive: Sovereign Debt WatchASSOCIATED PRESS NEWSWIRES
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Previous Debt Exchanges Point to Solution for Greece Access thousands of business sources not available on the free web. Learn More As expected, no decisions were made and none of the proposals that emerged has been officially endorsed, that person said. Technical teams will continue to work on proposals.

The process of finding a solution is made much more complicated by different national accounting rules and rulings on loan impairments, and also—in the case of banks—whether the bonds are held to maturity, available for sale or in their trading books.

The meeting was chaired by Vittorio Grilli, director general of the Italian Treasury and chairman of a top European Union committee involved in the Greek discussions, and was held under the auspices of the Institute of International Finance, a Washington-based group of more than 400 banks and financial institutions. Its managing director, Charles Dallara, said in a statement afterwards that participants "engaged in a constructive exchange of views on Greece and progress was made in advancing the discussions."

Participants included representatives of Deutsche Bank AG and Commerzbank AG of Germany, as well as French banks Société Générale SA, BNP Paribas SA and Crédit Agricole SA. German banks hold more Greek sovereign debt than banks from any country outside Greece, but the French have more overall exposure to Greek debt because two of them own Greek banks.

Also represented at the IIF meeting were HSBC Holdings PLC, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Barclays PLC and Intesa Sanpaolo SpA, among others.

—Brian Blackstone
in Frankfurt
contributed to this article.
Write to Stephen Fidler at stephen.fidler@wsj.com and Alessandra Galloni at alessandra.galloni@wsj.com

China Firms Face Research Armies

China Firms Face Research Armies

By ALISON TUDOR

HONG KONG—In a rundown block in an industrial section of Hong Kong, rows of researchers at a two-year-old firm called Blue Umbrella are trawling through documents such as corporate records, blogs and government watch lists. Their goal: to look for accounting discrepancies or investigate the financial claims of Chinese businesses.

Stuart Witchell is what you might call a private detective for investors who are interested in China but concerned about the accuracy of financial information on Chinese businesses. WSJ's Alison Tudor reports.
.It is a growth industry. Investors around the world eager to profit from China's fast-growing economy want to know the risks. And hedge funds are circling over more and more Chinese stocks they want to bet against.

Blue Umbrella investigates hundreds and sometimes thousands of companies and individuals every month, according to Allan Matheson, who runs the research firm. Blue Umbrella does the homework in China for hedge funds, banks and private-equity firms that are too busy or lack the language skills to do the job for themselves.

Most of the checks help investors conducting due diligence. But recently, there have been a flurry of orders from short sellers looking to make money by selling shares of companies whose financial statements look suspicious. "We're starting to see companies that are going on fishing expeditions," Mr. Matheson said.

Asia's bankers are feeling the heat as IPOs are delayed and worries grow over Chinese accounting. Plus, research firms are sprouting up that look into accounting discrepancies and financial claims of Chinese companies. WSJ's Jake Lee and Alison Tudor discuss.
.Michael Cheng, a 28-year-old Boston University graduate and researcher at Blue Umbrella, describes his job as "finding out who all the bad guys are for our clients."

The booming power of research firms and short sellers that say they uncover information about Chinese companies is highlighted by the splash caused by short seller Muddy Waters LLC, which issued a critical report this month about Sino-Forest Corp., a Chinese tree-plantation company listed in Toronto.

Muddy Waters alleged that there were overstated profits and other problems. Sino-Forest's stock tanked after the report, despite the company's strong denials.

Given the paucity of public data in China, it is often hard for short sellers to prove fraud or to quantify its presence. It is often equally difficult for the companies to disprove the short sellers' allegations quickly to stem the fall of their share prices.

"In emerging markets such as China, it's hard to get documentary evidence," says David Holloway, a former policeman and Interpol agent in Hong Kong who now is a private investigator. "You get the information from very discreetly speaking to people."

The hunger among investors with long or short positions on publicly traded Chinese companies to gain an edge is making lots of work for former diplomats, police officers, journalists and intelligence agents.

An in-depth investigation can cost millions of dollars, say people in the industry. Experts are available for hire at an hourly rate.

"We are giving people on Wall Street a chance to put themselves on the real streets of China, through our network," says David Legg, head of international markets at Gerson Lehrman Group Inc., which says it has a web of experts across Greater China.

Unlike in the U.S., where some so-called expert networks are facing regulatory and legal scrutiny since the prosecution of Galleon Group founder Raj Rajaratnam, Gerson Lehrman Group says it puts investors in touch only with experts who aren't inside the company.

More
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Exchange: An Anti-Bribery Boom in China
.In recent months, dozens of Chinese companies have acknowledged problems with their accounting. While there is no way to tell how widespread those problems are, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has said it is investigating accounting and disclosure issues at Chinese companies that list on U.S. exchanges through "reverse mergers," a transaction that can avoid the regulatory scrutiny that comes with an initial public offering.

What researchers dig up doesn't always prove fraud or illegal activity. "There is no doubt that there are cases of blatant fraud among Chinese companies, but there are also a lot of companies who are just weak in corporate governance," said Violet Ho at corporate-investigation firm Kroll Inc. in Beijing.

Some investigators use computer technology. Kim Frisinger, a former U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation agent based in Hong Kong who now works for consulting firm Control Risks, is setting up a new service in Asia that maps companies electronically by accessing their email servers, backup tapes, computers and laptops with the companies' permission. He is expecting brisk business from litigation as companies, their advisers and accountants seek to pinpoint if and how fraud happened by checking documents. The firm's revenue from its corporate investigations practice in China is up 150% in the past two years, he says.

Such investigators are supposed to abide by privacy laws. And some investors tightly control the questions asked by investigators or prefer to do most of their own due diligence.

"When we've looked at agricultural businesses in China, we've visited the farms, talked to other farmers and counted the trucks," says Jonathan Zhu, managing director at private-equity firm Bain Capital. Mr. Zhu uses advisers to complement his own investigations.

John Hempton, chief investment officer at hedge fund Bronte Capital, based in a suburb of Sydney, Australia, pored through financial statements of New York Stock Exchange-listed Chinese financial-software company Longtop Financial Technologies Ltd. while on a weeklong vacation on a Thailand beach earlier this year.

Bronte Capital decided to short Longtop shares, which Mr. Hempton wrote about in his blog. Since then, Longtop has said its auditor, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu CPA Ltd., resigned, and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has launched an investigation of Longtop.

"It was like shooting fish in a barrel," says Mr. Hempton, 44 years old. However, more competition from other hedge funds could force him to spend more time researching each company and to hire more outside sleuths to help him dig even deeper, he says.

Longtop has said it will conduct an independent inquiry into why its auditor resigned. Longtop representatives didn't respond to requests for comment. John Nester, a spokesman for the SEC, declined to comment.

A spokeswoman for Deloitte's global network referred questions to its Chinese affiliate. Efforts to reach the Chinese firm were unsuccessful.

Kerrisdale Capital Management LLC said in a report dated May 5 that it had hired investigators to visit the Chinese facilities of Advanced Battery Technologies Inc., to take photographs and provide commentary that helped the New York investment firm decide to short the Nasdaq-listed company. Kerrisdale said it had studied Advanced Battery's financial statements, concluding that revenue and profits were overstated in SEC filings. For example, financial statements filed by the company in China show sharply lower revenue for 2009 than it reported to the SEC, according to Kerrisdale.

Advanced Battery's chief executive, Zhiguo Fu, denied Kerrisdale's allegations in a phone interview. The company's shares are down by about two-thirds since March. According to a letter to Kerrisdale investors, the investment firm gained 73% in the first quarter, net of fees, propelled by short bets on Chinese companies.

Write to Alison Tudor at alison.tudor@wsj.com

Oil drops as international reserves are tapped

Oil drops as international reserves are tapped
By CHRIS KAHN

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Oil plunged nearly 5 percent Thursday after the International Energy Agency said it will release 60 million barrels of oil from its reserves to make up for a loss of Libyan exports in global oil markets.

The IEA, which includes the U.S., will release 2 million barrels per day over the next 30 days. Half of that will come from U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which currently holds 727 million barrels in underground caverns along the Gulf Coast.

The IEA said the oil will help offset the loss of about 132 million barrels of high-quality Libyan crude, cut off by continuing unrest there.

"Although there are huge uncertainties, analysts generally agree that Libyan supplies will largely remain off the market for the rest of 2011," the agency said.

Benchmark West Texas Intermediate for August delivery lost $4.59, or 4.8 percent, at $90.82 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Brent crude, which is used to price many international varieties, lost $6.78, or 5.9 percent, at $107.39 per barrel on the ICE Futures exchange.

The IEA announcement followed further indications of a slow economic recovery in the U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke on Wednesday warned that some problems -- in the financial and housing sectors -- would linger into next year. And on Thursday the Labor Department reported an increase in applications for unemployment benefits.

The 28-member IEA said that the loss of Libya's 1.5 million barrels of daily exports has squeezed oil supplies to the point that it now threatens to "undermine the fragile global economic recovery."

Analysts said the IEA's move will likely depress world oil prices temporarily, but it's unclear how long that will last. "It creates an immediate glut," said Michael Lynch, president of Strategic Energy & Economic Research. "But they're not solving the problem."

Lynch said the IEA is dumping oil onto the market at a time when supplies are still high. Supplies, which were expected to shrink in the second half of the year, will probably stay at healthy levels for an additional three months or so, Lynch said.

If oil demand continues to rise to historic levels this year, oil suppliers will continue to have trouble keeping up, he said.

Meanwhile, retail gasoline prices in the U.S. dropped for the 20th consecutive day, down a penny from Wednesday, to $3.612 per gallon, according to AAA, Wright Express and Oil Price Information Service. That's about 21 cents lower than a month ago.

In other Nymex trading, heating oil fell 14 cents, or 4.8 percent, to $2.8266 per gallon and gasoline futures lost 14 cents at $2.7891 per gallon. Natural gas gave up 12 cents at $4.197 per 1,000 cubic feet.

外资唱空中国奏响“五步曲” 资本大鳄阴谋曝光

外资唱空中国奏响“五步曲” 资本大鳄阴谋曝光

　　外资投行与评级机构唱空中国的大戏似乎没完没了。高盛唱空中国经济和股市，标普下调了中国房地产业的评级，对冲基金看空人民币升值，而国际评级机构惠誉也加入了这一行列。惠誉昨日表示，中国银行业信贷风险其实被低估，信用质量恶化或影响中国主权评级。

　　惠誉唱空中国银行业

　　国际评级惠誉亚太主权评级部门负责人Andrew Colquhoun昨日表示，中资银行信用质量已经恶化，中国银行业或面临危机。在他看来，中国银行业信贷风险被低估，主要是受到表外资产影响失真。

　　Colquhoun认为，中国银行业资产负债表以外资产状况不佳，如果银行资产质量出现恶化，那么中国政府或需要实施救助，而这将影响中国的主权评级。“由于创纪录的信贷扩张和资产价格飙升，中国在2013年年中以前爆发银行业危机的概率高达60%”，惠誉这样总结中国银行业的危机。

　　此前于3月份，惠誉曾警告称房地产贷款和地方政府融资平台贷款这两大威胁挑战中国银行业。

　　国际大鳄屡次唱空中国

　　惠誉对中国银行的警告，是近来一系列海外大鳄唱空中国戏码的延续。

　　首先是中国楼市。早在今年4月，穆迪就曾发布报告，将中国房地产业的信用评级展望由“稳定”调整为“负面”，认为中国房地产开发商未来将面临艰难的营运环境。6月15日，标准普尔又将中国房地产业的评级展望由稳定调降至负面，原因是“信贷收紧及严厉的调控政策，都加剧了楼市的低迷”。而摩根士丹利6月15日发布的中国房地产研报同样预计中国房价将下跌。

　　接着轮到中国经济。瑞士信贷5月20日在香港发布研究报告，调低对2012年中国GDP增长预测至8.5%，较原先的预测降低了0.4%。同时下调今年全年中国经济增长预测为8.8%。索罗斯近日也明确表达了“中国经济可能存在硬着陆风险”的观点。此外，世界最大的空头对冲基金尼克斯联合基金总裁詹姆斯·查诺斯在今年5月公开表示，中国房地产泡沫比迪拜严重1000倍以上，“中国经济将在一次惊人的房地产泡沫破灭中崩溃”。

　　下面又轮到中国股市。5月下旬，高盛表态称A股短期还会有5%~10%的回调。令人啼笑皆非的是，在一个月之前的5月底，外资投行还在大唱A股赞歌。5月12日，高盛认为中国股市可能在今年下半年迎来“狂欢”。此后里昂证券、花旗银行等外资投行巨头接连发布报告，抱团唱多中国股市。回想当时的盛况，再看看如今的集体唱空，不禁让业界感叹这些国际大鳄们变脸速度之快。

　　在国际上一片“唱空中国”的声浪中，人民币似乎也开始成为做空者“狙击”的最新目标。华尔街日报周一披露的一封高盛内部邮件，揭示了一些大型机构正在试图做空人民币。而彭博资讯的统计更是显示，期权交易员对人民币的看空程度已达到近两年来的最高水平。

　　从楼市到经济，从股市到人民币，现在又轮到了银行，这出唱空中国的戏码已经唱响了“五步曲”。

　　资本大鳄的阴谋论？

　　几乎所有的国内经济专家认为，国际大鳄集体唱空中国，背后其实另有企图。

　　原因一，唱空做多？索罗斯在他表达对中国经济唱空言论之前的4月份，就曾有消息称，索罗斯还带着百亿美元资产重返中国香港市场并对境内的资本市场摩拳擦掌，意欲做空中国资本市场。

　　不仅仅是索罗斯，去年11月高盛报告引发A股大跌还历历在目，多年来国际投行公开唱空中国楼市，暗地里却大手笔进行房地产投资，最终都获利不菲。中国A股同样没有逃脱国际投行唱空做多、唱多做空的操纵。

　　原因二，挽救美国经济？有业内人士认为，包括索罗斯和高盛在内，几乎每个唱空中国论调者的背后，都存在影子问题。

　　最新研究报告就直言，唱空中国的背后直接意图是“倒逼前期流入新兴发展国家的热钱逐步回流美国，间接目的在于解决目前美国因QE2退出而导致的美国国债购买力不足的问题。这也可以从目前美国参与制造南海问题的行为里得到进一步验证”。

　　值得反思的是，世界各个国家包括美国在内对金融服务业开放都相当慎重，特别是对国际投行都非常戒备。对其唱多唱空的言论，投资者很多时候都需要多打个问号。

　　(信息时报)

China Reverse Merger Pits Morgan Stanley Against Hedge Funds

China Reverse Merger Pits Morgan Stanley Against Hedge Funds

Share Business ExchangeTwitterFacebook| Email | Print | A A A By Bloomberg News

June 22 (Bloomberg) -- On the morning of May 18, Kevin Barnes published a report accusing executives of Chinese fertilizer maker Yongye International Inc. of using acquisitions to loot cash from the company and manipulate earnings.

Barnes, an analyst at Cheyenne, Wyoming-based hedge fund Absaroka Capital Management LLC, set an estimated share value of $1 for Yongye. He said Absaroka had already bet an amount he wouldn’t reveal on a decline in the stock, which closed the day before at $4.58. The shares fell 23 percent in two days.

Less than two weeks later, Morgan Stanley’s Asian private- equity unit said it would buy $50 million of preferred stock in Yongye, pushing its shares on the Nasdaq Stock Market up 42 percent in a single session. The fund is one of at least six that are wagering the short sellers are wrong by investing in U.S.-listed Chinese companies that have had about $6.78 billion of market value erased this year following allegations of financial fraud by short sellers such as Barnes.

“Half the people, the longs, think the whole market is suffering because of the sins of the few, and therefore it’s a buying opportunity,” said Phil Groves, president of Hong Kong- based DAC Financial Management China Ltd., which does due diligence in China for investors. “The other half, the shorts, thinks there are a bunch of companies that are still trading but really worthless. Both have an opportunity to make money, because not every Chinese company listed in the U.S. is bad.”

Short investors bet against a stock by selling borrowed shares with the hope of repurchasing them at a lower price. Long investors buy shares betting the price will rise.

Private-Equity Buyouts

Since February at least six buyouts of U.S.-listed Chinese companies have been announced, totaling $1.96 billion in value, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Four of the acquisitions involve private-equity funds, including TPG Capital, Bain Capital LLC and Hong Kong-based Primavera Capital Management Ltd., founded by Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s former Greater China chairman, Fred Hu.

Shares of the target companies -- CNinsure Inc., Funtalk China Holdings Ltd., China Fire & Security Group Inc. and Chemspec International Ltd. -- have gained an average of 10 percent since the deals were announced, according to calculations based on Bloomberg data.

Yongye, which produces nutrients sprayed on plants and added to animal feed, is an “exceptional company that has built significant brand recognition,” Homer Sun, managing director of Morgan Stanley Private Equity Asia, said in a May 31 press release announcing the deal. The fund did “extensive due diligence” on the Beijing-based company, the statement said.

Hohhot Factory

Morgan Stanley’s investment buys it preferred shares that can be converted into common stock in the next five years, giving it a stake of about a 10 percent depending on company performance, according to filings. The deal has conditions: If Yongye fails to meet specified targets, including at least 20 percent annual profit growth from 2011 to 2014, Morgan Stanley can get its money back with a premium. Nick Footitt, a spokesman for the bank in Hong Kong, declined to comment.

Inside a two-story cement office building at a company factory complex in Hohhot, a city of 2.7 million in China’s northern province of Inner Mongolia, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Wu Zishen said in a June 10 interview that all of Barnes’s allegations were false and had been concocted by him to make a quick profit at the expense of shareholders.

Negotiations with Morgan Stanley had been going on for months, and the bank provided “a thorough health check to prove we are clean,” Wu said.

‘Nervous and Helpless’

“At first we were so angry at the short sellers,” said Wu, his eyes puffy and tired. “Then we calmed down and thought those attacks were not personal, they were profit-driven, so we should be rational in responding.”

Wu, who drives a Mercedes-Benz sport-utility vehicle and doesn’t speak English, said he watches his company’s stock price closely and has “not lived a single day in peace” since Yongye was listed in 2008.

“Anytime the stock price fluctuates dramatically, I feel nervous and helpless,” said Wu, who bought $3 million worth of shares in the company last week, according to company filings. “We feel hurt because we have put in effort. We have had more than 700 investor meetings over the past 1,000 days.”

During a tour of the Hohhot factory at 2 p.m. on a weekday afternoon, only a few workers were visible and workshop doors were padlocked. The company, which reported sales of $214 million last year, has a second facility in Wuchuan County, about an hour away by car, decorated inside with the faces of smiling farmers. Yongye executives call it the “smiley-face wall” and say the pictures are of satisfied customers.

SEC Investigation

The arrival of private equity into companies like Yongye means short sellers no longer have it all their own way. They’ve dominated the discussion since November, when Rino International Corp., a Dalian, China-based supplier of water-treatment equipment that was targeted for criticism, said two years of its financial statements aren’t reliable.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has revoked the registrations of at least eight Chinese companies since December, and more than 24 firms have disclosed auditor resignations or accounting flaws to the agency since March, SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro wrote in an April 27 letter.

The SEC began an investigation last year into the use of reverse takeovers, a common method used by Chinese companies such as Yongye to list their shares in the U.S. without the regulatory and investor scrutiny of an initial public offering. On June 9, the regulator urged caution when buying stakes in reverse-merger companies.

‘Risk-Free Short’

The market tone made reverse-takeover companies a “virtually risk-free short,” said John Bird, an Austin, Texas- based private investor who holds more than $10 million worth of short positions on 30 U.S.-listed Chinese companies, including 35,000 shares of Yongye as of June 8.

The 101 Chinese companies with a market valuation of less than $1 billion listed in New York trade at a median of 3.9 times 12-month trailing earnings, well below the 10.2 times similarly sized firms in Hong Kong fetch, Bloomberg data show.

“If the longs start seeing a buyout as a potential safety net, it ends up making the short side less effective,” said Bird. “I hate to see it, but I congratulate the people who are able to put something together.”

Private-equity funds are targeting U.S.-listed Chinese companies because they offer better potential value compared with private enterprises in China, where owners demand high prices partly because of the large number of buyers chasing each opportunity, said Donald Yang, managing director at Abax Global Capital Ltd. in Hong Kong.

Abax, Bain

Funds focused on China raised $12.8 billion between January and May of this year, according to the Hong Kong-based Centre for Asia Private Equity Research Ltd. That compares with $20.4 billion in all of 2010, and $11 billion in 2009.

Abax, which manages $900 million in private-equity and hedge funds according to its website, is backing management-led buyouts of Harbin Electric Inc., an electric-motor maker, and Fushi Copperweld Inc., a Beijing-based producer of copper-clad wire. Abax counts Morgan Stanley among its investors.

The strategy of using a management buyout and relisting in either Hong Kong or China will release the embedded value of a company, Yang said.

“Even when you see value, you still have to think about how you crystallize that value,” Yang said. “Just buying the long stocks in the U.S. is no way to do it.”

Yang declined to discuss plans for Harbin Electric or Fushi Copperweld.

Bain, which is buying all of China Fire & Security for about $234 million, may relist the company after three years, according to a person with knowledge of the matter who asked not to be identified because the plan isn’t public. A spokesman for Boston-based Bain declined to comment.

Fair Price

The high legal and advisory costs of going private, including the need to show shareholders they are getting a fair price, means that buyouts have been a rarity for U.S.-listed Chinese companies, said Paul Strecker, a Hong Kong-based partner at Shearman & Sterling LLP, which has served as a legal adviser on nine deals announced in the past year.

In the past year, Only two of the take-private deals have closed: the $70 million management buyout of Beijing-based Sinoenergy Corp., which operates compressed natural gas filling stations in China, and a $14 million management buyout of Tongjitang Chinese Medicines Co., a pharmaceuticals firm in Shenzhen, China.

Paulson’s Losses

Bain and Morgan Stanley are moving into territory where big investors have been burned. Paulson & Co., the New York hedge fund run by John Paulson that oversees about $37 billion, and C.V. Starr & Co., a firm run by former American International Group Inc. Chairman Maurice “Hank” Greenberg, have lost on respective investments in Toronto-listed Sino-Forest Corp. and U.S.-listed China MediaExpress Holdings Inc.

Shares of both companies fell after short seller Muddy Waters Research issued reports accusing the firms of fraud. Paulson’s fund sold all 34.7 million of its shares in Sino- Forest, a tree-plantation owner, it said in a June 20 regulatory filing, potentially losing C$705 million ($720 million). C.V. Starr’s loss may be more than $30 million.

“You have to be unequivocally convinced that the assets are there, that the business is real and that management is honest,” said Matthew Wiechert, research director of Glaucus Research Group LLC, a U.S. short seller specializing in Chinese- based companies listed on foreign exchanges. “There’s no recourse if you’re fooled.”

Humic Acid

Absaroka’s Barnes, who wrote the report on Yongye and traveled to Inner Mongolia this month to continue his research, said he stands by his conclusions and that private-equity buyers are capitalizing on his work.

“Private-equity investors that are putting new money to work in U.S.-listed Chinese firms are benefiting from a voluminous amount of due diligence work completed by short sellers to date,” Barnes said in a telephone interview.

Barnes’s report raised questions about Yongye’s $35 million agreement to acquire lignite coal exploration and production rights from Wuchuan Shuntong Humic Acid Company Ltd. in March 2010. Lignite coal is the main raw material for Yongye’s humic acid products, according to filings. As of March 31, Yongye had not received government approvals, the company said in its most recent quarterly filing. Yongye said it expected to obtain the mineral rights by the end of the year.

Attacks on Yongye

The Absaroka report said Chinese filings by Wuchuan Shuntong show an “insignificant” holding company with no revenue and little capital. The transaction was “a hoax” controlled by Yongye’s management and “apparently created to loot $35 million of public investors’ cash out of the company,” Barnes wrote.

Another purchase in 2010, of the customer list of a Yongye distributor for $3 million in cash and 3.6 million in new shares, was structured in a way that helped the company manipulate earnings, the report said.

Barnes wasn’t the first to attack Yongye. On March 23, a blogger named Ian Bezek challenged the quality of the company’s earnings on Seeking Alpha, an investor website. The stock fell 10 percent that day. Yongye said in a statement that Bezek’s allegations were based on “innuendo and loaded questions rather than any factual basis.”

A May 9 note published by OLP Global LLC, a research firm focusing on China, said Wuchuan Shuntong is a shell set up by Yongye and that the fertilizer firm spent $67 million acquiring assets from “sellers that do not exist.” Yongye’s shares fell 5 percent that day, only to rebound 5.9 percent the next day.

Rebutting Barnes

At the factory in Hohhot, CEO Wu and Sam Yu, the company’s chief financial officer, rebutted Barnes’s allegations. Buying the distribution list gave Yongye more control over channels used to push out its products, Wu said. The purchase of the humic acid supplier opened access to raw materials, said Yu.

“It doesn’t matter if it’s a small company or not, as long as they have the approval and access from local government to explore lignite coal,” Yu said.

Yongye is the third Chinese company to be targeted by Barnes, who said he worked in the global natural resources investment banking group at JPMorgan Chase & Co. from 2003 to 2009. China Shen Zhou Mining & Resources Inc. and SkyPeople Fruit Juice Inc. both saw shares slump after Absaroka published negative reports. Shen Zhou shares have fallen 53 percent since the March 8 report. SkyPeople’s shares fell 18 percent to $2.08 on June 1, the day of Absaroka’s report, and are now down 7.1 percent from the May 31 close.

‘Good Faith’

Barnes hasn’t been as successful with his prediction about Yongye. Shares closed yesterday at $5.19, up 13 percent since the day before publication of the Absaroka report. Short selling has fallen to 3 percent of outstanding shares as of June 17 from a record 9.4 percent on April 4, according to Data Explorers, a New York-based research firm. The average short interest for stocks in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index is 2.7 percent.

Barnes couldn’t get access to Yongye’s facilities from his base at the Holiday Inn in Hohhot earlier this month. The company denied his request to join an investor visit on the grounds that his interest “is not one anchored in good faith,” it said in an e-mail sent to Barnes.

--Mohammed Hadi, Dune Lawrence, Eva Woo. With assistance from Cathy Chan in Hong Kong and Nikolaj Gammeltoft in New York. Editors: Neil Western, Robert Friedman.

To contact the Bloomberg News staff responsible for this story: Mohammed Hadi in Hong Kong at mhadi1@bloomberg.net; Dune Lawrence in New York at dlawrence6@bloomberg.net; Eva Woo in Beijing at ewoo9@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Philip Lagerkranser at lagerkranser@bloomberg.net Gary Putka at gputka@bloomberg.net

Europe Wrangles Over Greece

Europe Wrangles Over Greece

Finance Ministers Struggle With Long-Term Fix, but Get Closer on Short-Term Cash

By MARCUS WALKER in Berlin and CHARLES FORELLE in Athens

European finance ministers meeting Sunday in Luxembourg moved toward approving a fresh quarterly installment of Greece's €110 billion ($157 billion) bailout loan, but they remained divided over the details of a far harder task—extending Greece a giant new package that would support it for years to come.

Protesters in Barcelona decried EU leaders' plan to deal with the euro zone's financial crisis on Sunday.
.Meanwhile, finance ministers and central bankers from the Group of Seven industrialized countries held a conference call late Sunday to discuss the crisis, according to people familiar with the matter. Natalie Wyeth, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Treasury Department, confirmed a G-7 conference call was held but declined to provide any details. A senior euro-zone official said the U.S. urged a fast resolution of the Greek issue.

In Athens, Prime Minister George Papandreou said his country was negotiating a new deal of roughly the same size as the one granted just last year—about another €100 billion—and urged his parliament to back him in a vote of confidence scheduled for Tuesday. The Greek premier, fresh from a cabinet reshuffle meant to lift his political fortunes, will travel to Brussels on Monday for talks with European Union leaders.

Europe thought it had put Greece's troubles to rest last spring with a mammoth bailout that rewrote the contract among the euro's member countries. Now, Greece needs more help, and there's fatigue all around.

Voters in stronger countries—Greece's new creditors—are watching in anger as the costs rise. Greeks are rebelling against their leaders' determination to press the searing budget cuts that are the price of their rescue.

Greece's Debt Crisis
View Interactive
.
.Greece will run out of cash in the middle of next month unless funds earmarked under last year's bailout are released. Unwilling to let that happen, finance ministers are likely to approve disbursement of €8.7 billion; the International Monetary Fund, which is also contributing to the bailout, would likely agree to pay out €3.3 billion in the coming weeks.

Approval of the loan installments should be routine: EU bureaucrats check Greece's progress, and finance ministers sign the check. But nothing is routine about Greece. Amid concern that the country was veering too far off track, the IMF had been hesitant to pay. The EU monitoring mission spent weeks in Athens.

The ministers' meeting stretched past midnight Sunday. In the early hours of Monday morning, they released a statement saying they would decide on the "main parameters" of a new bailout package in July. The statement said the new bailout would include "informal and voluntary" arrangements with creditors that would produce a "substantial reduction" in the amount of new funding necessary—but without casting Greece into default.

European officials, however, have struggled without success for weeks to find a solution that fits those criteria. Rating agencies have made clear that any action that harms creditors—even if dubbed voluntary—is likely to trigger a default.

The statement also said discussions with Greece were continuing over the terms of its compliance with last year's bailout; the completion of those talks "in the coming days"—along with the passage of more budget cuts by the Greek parliament—would "pave the way" for the payment of the next installment.

The meeting will continue on Monday. But agreeing to dole out money approved last year is the easy part. Planning for a future in which Greece needs much more money, for much longer, is another matter.

The big problem ahead is the likely inability of Greece to repay its debts—which have only mounted as the EU and the IMF pile on more loans. Europe doesn't yet have a strategy for dealing with that reality, as shown by Germany's failure to convince others in Europe to begin restructuring Greece's debt.

If the first year of the euro crisis was about fighting a liquidity crisis, the second year is likely to center on how to cope with Greek insolvency—a prospect made more likely by Greek leaders' declining ability to cut an outsize budget deficit in the face of popular frustration.

Greek Headaches
Money for now: Greece runs out of cash in mid-July.

Money for later: The aid pledged to Greece last year will only last through 2011.

Who pays? Germany and others are pushing somehow to share the cost with Greece's private creditors.

Greek politics: Can Greece's premier survive popular revolt against EU-mandated budget cuts?
.The great fear among euro-zone governments and at the European Central Bank is that a debt default by Greece could undermine bond markets' trust in other cash-strapped euro members. Ireland and Portugal are already struggling to rebuild investors' confidence, despite rescue loans from the European Union and International Monetary Fund. If panicked investors flee from Spain, a $1.6 trillion economy, the country could prove too big to save.

A new loan package for Greece, as before, will be tied to ever-deeper fiscal cuts by the Greek government. Also as before, it will have as its aim to cover Greece's borrowing needs until it can balance its books and return to bond markets.

That strategy is losing credibility, many economists say. It always relied on Greece's cutting its huge budget deficit so radically that tax revenues far exceed public spending. Only then would Greece be able to bring down its government debt to a sustainable level. (Last year, the Greek government spent a quarter more than it took in.)

"Euro-zone governments are still pretending that they are dealing only with a liquidity problem, and that Greece and Ireland will emerge creditworthy from their programs," says Thomas Mayer, chief economist at Deutsche Bank in Frankfurt.

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French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde met with Greek Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos in Luxembourg
."But what happens if these countries can't return to the capital markets? If more austerity programs are needed, will voters rebel? The message is missing that a country that can't pay its debts must restructure," Mr. Mayer says.

A country's solvency depends not just on its debt and growth, but also on its politics: Can its government maintain support for painful fiscal measures for long enough to stabilize its debt level? The political mood in Athens has soured noticeably—changing the already knotty calculus of negotiations. European leaders have said both the current quarterly payment and any new bailout are contingent on the Greek parliament's agreeing to fresh budget cuts.

But Mr. Papandreou has faced a revolt inside his ruling Socialist party over those cuts. Last year, many Greeks accepted the tough measures that accompanied the first bailout as a necessary step on the path to reform, and European authorities were able to craft a bailout plan with solid political backing.

More
How the Euro Keeps Bears Behind Bars
Markets Expected to See-Saw
.That backing is slipping away. A mass protest and strike last week in Athens made plain the public discontent, and weakening support from Mr. Papandreou's party's deputies precipitated the cabinet reshuffle—which sidelined George Papaconstantinou, the finance minister who was seen as the architect of the unpopular austerity measures.

Mr. Papandreou's Socialists hold just a five-seat majority in the 300-member Parliament, and one Socialist deputy has said he will vote against the new package of budget cuts.

The new finance minister, Evangelos Venizelos, is in Luxembourg meeting his counterparts. A Greek government official said Mr. Venizelos would be "pragmatic" on what further measures are possible, and "tell his counterparts to refrain from public criticism of Greece or push for unrealistic targets, because the government in Athens is facing a lot of public anger."

One year into its multiyear fiscal program, Greece is running out of steam. The budget is off target thanks to a tanking economy and persistent tax evasion.

In Germany, politicians have worried for months that Greece will end up defaulting in a couple of years. By then, the European taxpayer would have replaced the bond market as Greece's main creditor, thanks to the loans euro-zone countries are now giving Athens to pay bondholders. German taxpayers would stand to lose the most when Greek debt is written off.

Germany's finance ministry hatched a plan this spring to extend the maturity dates of Greece's bonds, so that international aid to Greece doesn't go straight into the pockets of private investors. A maturity extension would have been a soft kind of default by Greece—and preparation for major debt forgiveness, known as a "haircut," at a later date. The ECB fought the German plan vigorously, arguing that it would spark massive contagion. The central bank made clear that it wouldn't accept Greek debt as collateral in its lending operations—a calamity for Greek banks—if Greece were to default, soft or hard.

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Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou proceeds to the cabinet meeting of the new government at the Greek Parliament in Athens, on Friday. A confidence vote in Parliament on the new cabinet is due to be held on Tuesday.
.Friday, Ms. Merkel dropped Germany's demand to extend the maturity dates, saying a looser gentleman's agreement by banks to maintain their lending to Greece would be "a good foundation" for a new Greek aid package. Her concession eases the way to a deal to continue funding Greece.

The negotiations, said Dutch Finance Minister Jan Kees de Jager, whose country is a key ally of Germany in bailout talks, could be "very difficult."

—Alkman Granitsas, Matthew Dalton, Laurence Norman, Costas Paris and Devlin Barrett contributed to this article.
Write to Marcus Walker at marcus.walker@wsj.com and Charles Forelle at charles.forelle@wsj.com

Chinese Firms Need to Open Up Books

Chinese Firms Need to Open Up Books

Poor access to information is a major culprit in the selloff of China's overseas-listed companies. If China hopes to limit the damage, it needs to open up.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating accounting and disclosure issues at a number of U.S.-listed Chinese companies that acquired backdoor listings through so-called reverse mergers, and even top-name Chinese companies are inviting new scrutiny. Renren Inc., a social-networking site that launched its shares to much fanfare in early May, now trades at about half its IPO price. Renren itself stirred controversy when it lowered the growth rate of its user base without explanation in its IPO prospectus and the head of its audit committee resigned just before the listing.

Shares of Toronto-listed Sino-Forest Corp. have plunged 80% since late May after a short seller alleged problems in the forestry company's accounting, which the company denies. Hong Kong-listed Chinese companies, too, are drawing new scrutiny over their accounting.

Not all Chinese companies are shady. But investors are right to ask: How do you know which aren't?

One answer is access to information. Auditors need it to be sure a company's business is as good as management says it is. So do regulators who oversee the auditors.

In the case of Chinese companies, however, there are no arrangements that allow the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, the U.S. government's accounting regulator, to inspect the work of accountants in China. So the PCAOB can't really know whether that work is reliable. Using U.S. accountants doesn't help because they outsource the real work to accountants in China anyway.

In testimony to U.S. lawmakers this past April, James Doty, the PCAOB's chairman, called the group's inability to inspect the work of registered firms in China "a gaping hole in investor protection."

The limited ability of Hong Kong regulators to access information on Chinese companies has long been a risk factor for the city's stock market, the primary venue through which foreign investors buy a piece of China. That ability suffered a new blow late last year when the local exchange agreed to let mainland Chinese companies listed in the territory use mainland auditors. As part of the new arrangement, Hong Kong's Securities and Futures Commission secured a promise that it would be able to examine records of auditors for companies it wants to investigate.

"Clearly the test will be when we have a live case to go through," Martin Wheatley, the outgoing head of the SFC, recently said in an interview. That hasn't yet happened.

Concerns about the transparency of Chinese companies put one Hong Kong-listed stock through the wringer last week. On Tuesday, Standard & Poor's withdrew its ratings for long-term corporate debt of a major Chinese packaging manufacturer, Nine Dragons Paper (Holdings) Ltd., after its analyst complained of being unable to get senior management to answer questions about the company's business. The stock plunged more than 17% after S&P's move, though it regained much of the loss the next day, when Nine Dragons said it was willing to cooperate with S&P and respond to requests for information.

China isn't the only market where information is hard to come by. It comes with the emerging-markets territory. That won't diminish the impact of these accounting questions at a time when trust in China's corporate success stories can no longer be taken for granted.

Chinese regulators could start repairing the country's reputation with investors by signing a deal with the PCAOB giving it access to work done by the country's auditors. No doubt, investors may not like everything they get to see. But right now, what they don't see is even scarier.

—Isabella Steger contributed to this article.

For Treasury Bulls, It's All Good

For Treasury Bulls, It's All Good

Even a Potential U.S. Government Debt Default Doesn't Faze Them

By MATT PHILLIPS

Investors have been on hair-triggers in markets around the world, dumping their holdings at the slightest sign of trouble. There is one big exception: U.S. Treasurys.

The U.S. government is several weeks away from the possibility—albeit remote—of a default, yet Treasury prices are rising, pushing yields to their lowest levels of the year. Not only do bond-market investors appear unconcerned about the ongoing debate over raising the debt limit, many see any budget deal as a boost for the market.

Treasury optimists interpret this weekend's golf outing between President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio) as a positive on the prospects for a deal, says Dan Clifton, head of policy research at Strategas Research Partners.

"While it may sound cheesy, there's dialogue going on and you're going to need that dialogue to seal the final deal," Mr. Clifton said.

The bullish scenario that the Treasury market is pricing in is as follows: The budget talks go down to the wire, but trading remains calm as negotiations muddle toward an eventual deal. Pronouncements from Washington don't show positions hardening ahead of the Aug. 2 deadline set by the Treasury Department. The expected 11th-hour deal not only averts default, it slows the economy by cutting government spending, boosting Treasurys.

"What the market currently believes right now is that there's going to be a resolution of some sort, and we're not going to have to worry about this on Aug. 2," said Jim Caron, global head of interest rates strategy at Morgan Stanley. "We want to know that there's room for agreement. So if anybody takes a hard line on it, the market's going to react to that."

Instead of a possible default, investors, focused on slowing growth in the U.S. and turmoil in Europe, are treating Treasurys as the safe haven they always have been. The yield on the 10-year note finished Friday slightly lower, at 2.944%, down from 3.57% in early April.

Indeed, the bad-news scenario for Treasurys would appear to be an unexpected jump in economic growth. The conventional wisdom is that the end of the Federal Reserve's bond-buying program over the next few weeks will likely add to the economy's weakness, rather than lead to a selloff in Treasurys, which would boost their yield.

To be sure, Treasurys could see some volatility as politicians in Washington fire more salvos over the next few weeks. David Ader, head of government-bond strategy at CRT Capital Group, in Stamford, Conn., says he will be paying particularly close attention to the tone of influential Republicans from the House of Representatives.

He said the bond market wants to see statements from Republicans that show "a more strident or adamant view that, 'We will not allow the U.S. to go into default, but we want to get something for it.' "

It is unlikely, however, that that is the only message that will be delivered to the bond market. "We're going to have that big fight," said Mr. Clifton, of Strategas Research. "A lot of it is going to be noise, but it just creates that background of volatility as it goes into those final negotiations."

All this isn't to say there is no indication of concern. Trading in credit-default swaps on U.S. debt—insurance-like contracts that pay off in the event of a default—has picked up. And prices for shorter-term versions of such protection have risen, indicating that the concern is about the debt-ceiling debate, not longer-term fiscal issues.

Some big investors in Treasurys are also worried. Bill Gross of Pacific Investment Management Co. dumped his Treasury holdings several months ago, and over the weekend a top aide to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said the country will continue to reduce its Treasury holdings, citing the budget impasse and slow growth.

China, the biggest foreign holder of Treasurys, boosted its holdings of Treasurys in April after five months of reducing its stake, and overall foreigners were buyers that month.

Treasury bulls see any budget deal, which would likely include spending cuts, as a boost to the market because the cuts would be another headwind for the economy and, some argue, another reason to own Treasurys.

"I believe that spending cuts will have disproportionate effect on growth this time around," said Priya Misra, head of U.S. interest-rates strategy research at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, adding, "Treasurys are not necessarily the worst investment out there, if you think that the economy is weakening."

Write to Matt Phillips at matt.phillips@wsj.com

In 2011, Whither Skeptics of Euro?

In 2011, Whither Skeptics of Euro?

Betting on a Common-Currency Tumble Has Been a Loser, as Dollar Proves Even Weaker; Still a Tempting Target

By TOM LAURICELLA

For the second time in a year, European leaders are scrambling to prop up Greece. But the euro is faring far better this time.

Last spring, as Greece first teetered on the brink, there were rising expectations that the common currency would by now have plunged against the U.S. dollar, with some forecasters looking for declines approaching 20%. Talk that the crisis would lead to a breakup of the euro zone added to the gloom.

.From May to June 2010, analysts on average cut their midyear 2011 euro forecasts to $1.1950 from $1.2920, according to Consensus Economics.

Investors, especially hedge funds, flocked to bearish bets on the euro. But, aside from those with very short time horizons, wagering that the European debt crisis would cripple the euro has been a losing bet.

Even as the risk of a Greek default remains, the euro, which was at $1.4267 early Monday in Asia from $1.4302 late Friday in New York, is up nearly 20% from its low under $1.20 in June 2010. The crux of the mistake: not recognizing that the fundamentals behind the dollar would be even worse than for the euro.

"They didn't quite get it right," says Che-wing Pang, editor of Consensus Economics, which collects euro predictions from 69 forecasters. By contrast, euro forecasts for midyear 2012 have been locked around $1.40 for the past two months and are actually up from April.

Analysts caution that the euro could still be vulnerable to collapse against the dollar should there be a disorderly default by Greece on its debt obligations, such as the country unilaterally deciding not to pay bondholders or aid being withheld by the European Union or the International Monetary Fund. Even an organized debt restructuring is seen as potentially sending the euro lower, depending on its impact on European banks.

"There are some scenarios that could still be very bearish for the euro, and the past week has been a wake-up call," says Elsa Lignos, a currency strategist at RBC Capital Markets in London. Even though the markets are expecting Greece to default, "nobody really knows what that means, and its impact depends on what the context is."

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Euro notes
.European finance ministers, meeting in Luxembourg to discuss ways to deal with the Greek financial crisis, early Monday morning said they had narrowed their differences over how to get Greece's private-sector creditors to contribute to the country's financing in coming years. But they left crucial details unresolved, most importantly how to get creditors to participate without causing a Greek sovereign default. They will meet again later Monday.

Europe's huge problems continue to make it a tempting target for "short" positions that would profit as the currency falls. Last week saw stepped up buying of options that would give big payouts should the euro drop steeply, such as to $1.10 or $1.15. And as the euro fell toward $1.40 last week, there was renewed talk of a bigger break lower toward $1.35. However, as has often been the case, the euro frustrated the bears and reversed course. "A lot of people have been burned," says Alan Ruskin, a currency strategist at Deutsche Bank.

For example, the managers tracked by the Parker Global Strategies Currency Managers Index have been consistently short the euro over the past year, says Jon Stein, managing director at Parker. However, on balance, "we're looking at very few months where it was a clearly profitable position," Mr. Stein says. The exceptions were November and May, when the euro swooned. Mr. Stein says managers appear to continue to be positioned for a lower euro, but with a bias toward making this bet against currencies other than the dollar.

Meanwhile, many also failed to spot the currency against which the euro would in fact tumble: the Swiss franc. Last week the euro fell to a record low against the Swiss franc and finished the week down 13% from a year ago. One of the driving factors is that, for European investors, the Swiss franc has been seen as a haven thanks to the country's strong fiscal position. The drop against the Swiss franc "is a purer gauge of what the euro would be looking like against something that's perceived as a hard currency," says Deutsche Bank's Mr. Ruskin. "That's very different from the way in which the U.S. dollar is perceived."

Rather than being considered a refuge, the dollar has increasingly been seen as a troubled currency, thanks in part to the poor U.S. fiscal outlook.

But many factors went into the wrong calls on the euro against the dollar. For starters, analysts underestimated the degree to which the European Central Bank would support the bond markets and banks of Greece, Portugal and Ireland. The rest of Europe's economy, meanwhile, proved much more resilient than expected, in large part thanks to strong export growth out of Germany and other so-called core euro-zone countries. At the same time, Spain, whose large economy many worried would tip the euro zone into free fall, has taken steps to shore up its finances.

Meanwhile, the U.S. economy has turned out to be much weaker than expected, last year flirting with a double-dip recession. This time last year, expectations were that the Federal Reserve would likely raise rates long before the ECB. Instead, the Fed launched an unprecedented second round of quantitative easing, pumping money into the financial system through large purchases of bonds and pledging to keep interest rates low for an extended period. Then, earlier this year, the ECB raised rates, and it is expected to tighten again this summer.

The euro has also picked up support from China, which, as officials there did last week, repeatedly pledged to continue buying euro-zone debt. Moreover, in addition to China, managers of other countries' foreign reserves were adding to euro holdings as part of a gradual diversification away from the dollar, analysts said.

The result was that, for all of the euro zone's problems, the dollar was in worse shape. "It was a race to the bottom," says Deutsche Bank's Mr. Ruskin. While working at a different bank last May, Mr. Ruskin predicted the euro would fall to $1.1650 by the end of 2010; instead it finished at $1.33. "So far, the dollar has been winning that race," he says.

Sebastien Galy, a currency strategist at Société Générale, this time last year—while also at a different bank—was arguing the euro needed to fall to parity with the dollar in order to make peripheral economies like Greece more competitive.

Mr. Galy recently joked that he had been told by a student in a class he teaches that the parity call had been a contrarian signal to buy euros. "We made one fundamental mistake in judgment, which was basically Fed policy," Mr. Galy says.

Write to Tom Lauricella at tom.lauricella@wsj.com

(图文)麻烦大了 海归高官陷入争议漩涡

(图文)麻烦大了 海归高官陷入争议漩涡

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世界博览    2011-06-16 07:09:14

周小川

“海归”从政始自清末，辉煌于民国，黯然于“文革”，复兴于当代
他们影响了中国国际化进程，同时又陷入了巨大的争议漩涡之中
2011年是值得纪念的一年——留美幼童出海140周年，辛亥革命100周年，中国入世10周年——三个看似不相关的事件背后，活跃着一个共同的群体：“海归”。
百多年前，他们的举动曾关乎中国社会的发展，亦使这个古老民族放眼世界，蠕动前行。随后，又倏忽间在中国社会中消失了，并成为诸多可怕字眼的代名词。
随着中国改革开放进程的推进，一批“海归”重新开始登上中国的商界、政坛，并跟历史开玩笑一般，成为一支广受关注的力量。他们是一个神秘的部落，是时代的宠儿，也一直是社会的焦点所在。因此，关于他们的故事，精彩而刺激。
尤其是最近两年，安徽、广东等省又推出新规，延揽“海归”进入政府高级管理职位。一度热议的“海归从政”话题再度升温。
那么，“海归”的加入，究竟能给中国的政治带来什么样的新气象呢？
《世界博览》杂志尝试着通过横向梳理现在几个“海归”高官群体对中国国际化的影响和纵向梳理近百年来“海归”对中国现代化的影响，从沉重中作出清晰的回答。
留学欧美的共同经历让他们成了中国政坛上一个独特的群体
中国与世界的“翻译者”
他们一方面推动了中国国际化的进程，另一方面又陷入了巨大的争议漩涡之中。
本刊记者 | 张健康
中国人民银行行长周小川再次被置于舆论臧否的风口浪尖。
2011年6月2日，美国《华尔街日报》网络版的一篇题为《周小川为人民币改革巧施木马计？》(Were China’s Leaders Conned？)的文章援引北京知情人士的话报道说，2009年，周小川成功说服中国领导人批准了他的人民币国际化构想，他之所以能够成功，一个重要的原因是，他运用了一种特洛伊木马策略，利用经济民族主义的说辞来推行自己的议事日程，通过使人民币更依赖市场力量而不是行政命令，最终实现国家放松对经济的控制。
但是，中国人民银行货币政策委员会委员、清华大学金融系主任李稻葵认为，上述说法是一种过于高明的解释，如果周小川真有如此精明的话，他早就能够避开国内对他众多的政治攻击了。
最近几年，屡遭国内政治攻击的高级官员不惟周小川。此前，一些人口中的龙永图亦曾经历了从“民族英雄”到“卖国贼”的转变。而他们被攻击的一个重要“把柄”是，他们对中国经济国际化的现状“居功至伟”；与此同时，批评者还总是不忘提及，他们均有着海外留学的经历。
从美国“拿来”股票市场的留学生
2001年下半年中国股市的暴跌，以周小川为首的“海归派”不顾中国证券市场的发展现状和改革承受能力，单兵冒进推行改革，应承担直接责任。
周小川的官方简历没有提及他的美国修学经历，但是丝毫不妨碍外界视之为中国省部级“海归”高官的代表。
2008年3月28日，中国证券市场研究设计中心总干事、《财经》杂志总编辑王波明通过财经网撰文回忆说，是一群留学生缔造了中国股市。最初参与中国股票市场设计的主要是八名留美学生——王波明、高西庆(先后出任证监会副主席、全国社保基金理事会副理事长、中投公司总经理)、王巍(万盟投资管理有限公司创始人)、李青原(先后担任证监会国际部主任、证监会规划委办公室主任)、刘二飞(美国美林(亚太)有限公司董事总经理兼中国地区主席)、茅桐、王大伟和盛溢。直到1988年7月8日开完“万寿宾馆会议”，一群留美归国人员开始起草《中国证券市场创办与管理的设想》(即业内俗称的“白皮书”)之后，周小川才参与进来。当年11月9日上午，周小川还与高西庆、王波明及留美归国人员时任中国新技术创业投资公司总经理的张晓彬一起进入中南海国务院第三会议室，向中共中央政治局常委、国务院副总理兼中央财经领导小组副组长姚依林及国家经委、体改委、财政部和央行的领导人汇报了工作。
此时，周小川的官方身份是对外经济贸易部部长助理、国家经济体制改革委员会委员，而且1990年12月深圳证券交易所和上海证券交易所正式挂牌之后，周小川没有参与跟证券有关的工作，而是转任了中国银行副行长。
2000年年初，周小川正式进入他曾参与“助产”的证券行业。他被宣布出任中国证监会第四任主席当日，沪深两市大幅高开。市场的积极反应似乎预示着，他会有一个辉煌的任期。2001年7月，他还获得了就任证监会主席以来最重要的一项国际荣誉——被美国《商业周刊》评选为亚洲“决策者之星”。评选词称，自他履新以来，证监会出台的一系列引人注目的改革措施——诸如变“审批制”为“核准制”、引进国际会计准则、出台“退市令”、对操纵股价的违规行为进行严厉处罚等——使得中国的证券市场在深化改革、加强监管和规范化建设方面前进了一大步，越来越像美国的“华尔街”而非赌城“拉斯维加斯”。
然而，坏消息接踵而至——2001年7月26日，亦即国务院发布《减持国有股筹集社会保障资金管理暂行办法》一个半月之后，上证指数开始暴跌，一直从2001年6月14日的2245点跌至2005年6月6日的1000点。
业内人士事后总结说，2001年下半年中国股市的暴跌，固然是中国证券市场充满着操作欺诈，积重难返的必然结果，但是，以周小川为首的“海归派”不顾中国证券市场的发展现状和改革承受能力，单兵冒进推行改革，则应承担直接责任。
从此，“不懂国情”、“照搬照抄”成了“国情派”攻击“海归派”最主要的论点。
2002年11月5日，中国证监会和中国人民银行联合发布《合格境外机构投资者境内证券投资管理暂行办法》，绕过新兴资本市场国家或地区先设立“海外基金”(台湾模式)或“开放型国际信托基金”(韩国模式)阶段，直接允许境外机构投资证券交易所挂牌交易的A股股票、国债、可转换债券、企业债券及中国证监会批准的别的金融工具。
53天之后，周小川离开中国证监会，转任中国人民银行行长。
人民币汇率的解放者？
一批和周小川一样有着留学英美的经历、能讲一口流利的英语、熟悉西方经济学理论的人逐渐占据了中国人民银行的重要位置。
出任中国人民银行行长后，周小川担任中国银行副行长和主管外管局工作的央行副行长的经历引起了海内外舆论的高度关注。因为他担任中国银行副行长期间，中国银行还是中国的外汇专业银行，与另外三大国有专业银行相比，管理制度与业务同国际接轨更紧，而且正是从1994年起，中国开始实行以市场供求为基础的、单一的有管理的浮动汇率制；转任国家外汇管理局局长和主管外管局的央行副行长后，中国又成为了国际货币基金组织第八条成员国，实现了人民币经常项目下可兑换。所以，海内外不少观察家认为，他是中国内地金融业内国际化观念较强的人，期待他能在尊重中国国情的基础上，更注重内地金融业与国际惯例的接轨。
上任伊始，周小川的国际化观念和国际性知识便遭受了严峻的考验：中国大型金融机构从技术上来说已经破产(2001年，中国金融机构的不良贷款占总资产比例，官方表述是25%，国际评级机构的数据少则40%，多则50%以上)；日本和美国频繁向中国政府施压，要求人民币升值。
每个问题均不止一个政策选项，关键是政策当局如何选择。
周小川主导的中国人民银行没有立即给出答案。
而此时，中国人民银行内部的人事调整已经悄然展开。一批和周小川一样有着留学英美的经历、能讲一口流利的英语、熟悉西方经济学理论的人逐渐占据了中国人民银行的重要位置，比较受外界关注的包括：2003年，美国伊利诺大学经济学博士、北京大学中国经济研究中心教授易纲被从货币政策委员会副秘书长兼货币政策司副司长提升为货币政策司司长，2004年7月又被提升为行长助理，3年后升任副行长兼外管局局长；2004年5月，美国哥伦比亚大学商学院金融学博士、北京大学中国经济研究中心教授张新，留美经济学博士李波和美国加州大学圣克鲁斯分校国际金融学博士张涛“空降”中国人民银行，分别出任金融稳定局副局长、条法司副司长和研究局副局长，三人目前已分别升任中国人民银行上海总部副主任、主管汇率的货币政策二司司长和国际司司长。
2005年至2007年，中国人民银行终于公布了对上述两个问题的答案。
2005年7月21日晚7时，中国人民银行突然发布《中国人民银行关于完善人民币汇率形成机制改革的公告》，宣布从即日起，“开始实行以市场供求为基础、参考一篮子货币进行调节、有管理的浮动汇率制度。人民币汇率不再盯住单一美元，形成更富弹性的人民币汇率机制。”同时，“美元对人民币交易价格调整为1美元兑8.11元人民币”，即人民币对美元升值2%。
2006年至2007年，除中国农业银行之外的13家国有大型金融机构，经过注资、包装之后，集中上市。
突然宣布调整汇率制度和国有大型金融机构海内外上市，立即引发了业内广泛的争议。
2005年10月1日，香港中文大学工商管理学院教授郎咸平赴澳大利亚墨尔本发表演讲时说，中国人民银行的汇率制度调整存在四大致命缺陷：一是突然宣布调整破坏了政府信用；二是只升不贬的调整方式只会刺激国际炒家对人民币不断升值的预期；三是出台太过草率，因为中国尚不具备对付国际炒家的能力；四是盯住一篮子货币比单纯盯住美元使中国的汇率调整更加被动，因为盯住一篮子货币条件下，美国完全可以通过诱使第三国货币贬值的方式，间接迫使人民币升值。因而，调整的结果是国际热钱的大量涌入和中国制造业利润被挤干榨尽。
2006年之后的事实似乎证明了郎咸平的观点。
而国有大型金融机构海内外上市则直接引发了一场有关中国金融资产是否被贱卖的大争论，中央民族大学教授张宏良与周小川、唐双宁、吴敬琏之间的交锋一度成了社会关注的焦点。几年之后，人们争论的焦点又转移到了大型金融机构海外上市是否危及中国金融安全的问题上来，而对此，现实还没有给出答案。
然而，争论没有动摇周小川汇率市场化改革的信念，只是他变得更加谨慎。他开始告诉外界：“人民币完全可兑换好不好，资本市场完全对外开放好不好？对此不能轻易下结论。”“诊断具体问题并给出处方时，要尽可能避免矫枉过正而导致的超调，避免给下一次危机埋下导火索。”
2008年国际金融危机爆发、美元作为国际储备和结算货币的地位受质疑，给周小川的改革计划提供了千载难逢的机会。
2009年3月23～26日，亦即伦敦G20金融峰会举行前一周，周小川连续发表三篇文章，倡议把国际货币基金组织的特别提款权(SDR)发展成为超主权储备货币，逐步取代现有的国际储备货币。
此言一出，立即引起国内外舆论的高度关注。多数评论者认为，周小川的言论只是借伦敦G20金融峰会召开之机，表达对美国货币政策的不满，或者他的建议即便具有可行性，亦只是一种未来的选择方案。
然而，周小川的真正用意并不在此。只需对国际货币基金组织特别提款权所设定的规则稍加梳理就可以发现，周小川提出此建议背后的逻辑是，既然美元作为国际储备货币不值得信任，那就应该用新的国际储备货币取而代之；超越主权的国际货币基金组织特别提款权显然是一个很容易被大多数国家接受的选项；而中国 1994年就已经成为国际货币基金组织第八条成员国，特别提款权地位的提高就意味着人民币国际化进程的加快；而人民币国际化的前提又是，必须实现经常项目和资本项目可兑换。
一个利用国人对美国货币政策的不满推进人民币国际化进程，从而实现人民币汇率市场化的改革路径清晰可见。
伦敦G20金融峰会和匹兹堡G20峰会之后，超主权储备货币问题渐渐淡出了中国人民银行的论域，取而代之的是双边货币互换进程的加快。与此同时，汇率制度改革亦在按照“部分可兑换-基本可兑换-完全可兑换”的步骤逐步推进。最新的消息是，周小川的学术密友、中国建设银行[4.87 -0.61% 股吧]董事长郭树清6月3日接受媒体采访时透露说，未来5年内，能够实现资本项目下人民币的可兑换。
中国与世界经济的“翻译者”
参与“复关”谈判第一年，龙永图就遭遇了与世界没有共同语言的尴尬。
当《华尔街日报》网络版有关周小川的文章被各大网站广泛转载的时候，龙永图登上了大连一家地产公司特别为他策划的一个经济高峰论坛——《论道•龙永图》，他演讲的内容自然离不开“入世”谈判。7天之后，他又要赶赴天津滨海新区，主持首届“于家堡论坛年会”，年会的主题就是“中国入世十周年，金融开放回顾与展望”。
虽然龙永图离开谈判桌已经十年，但是多数公开场合，“入世”谈判总是他绕不开的话题。
十余年参与中国“复关”/“入世”谈判，不下五十次往返于北京与日内瓦之间，早已使他成了中国“入世”的代名词。
而从1992年他被任命为外经贸部国际经贸关系司司长，开始参与“复关”/“入世”谈判至今，他的角色经历了从中国与世界经济的“翻译者”，到中国经济融入世界经济的推动者，再到经济全球化的中国布道者的转换。
龙永图大学时学的是英美文学。1973年，28岁的他成了新中国向西方国家派出的第一批留学生之一，进入伦敦经济学院学习了一年的国际经济。与他同去的还有中国现任外交部长杨洁篪。
但是此后，龙永图的职业长期和他留学时所学专业没有任何关系，直到1991年一个偶然的机会改变了他的职业轨迹。
1991年下半年，中止了两年多的中国“复关”谈判重启。
同年，联合国开发计划署署长访问北京。此时，龙永图刚刚从中国驻联合国特约代表处回国。因为美国得克萨斯州出生的署长口音很重，联合国开发计划署驻中国代表处的翻译听不懂，他们就找到龙永图，希望他充当一下联合国开发计划署署长与时任外经贸部部长李岚清之间的翻译。
龙永图的翻译工作显然给李岚清留下了深刻印象。事后不久，他就接到了去中央党校学习的通知。3个月的学习结束之后，他便被任命为外经贸部国际司司长。1992年1月，他开始参与中国“复关”谈判。
参与“复关”谈判第一年，龙永图就遭遇了与世界没有共同语言的尴尬。
关贸总协定即后来的世界贸易组织经常被称作“市场经济俱乐部”，不言而喻，加入世界贸易组织最重要的前提就是必须承认搞市场经济。然而，1992年邓小平南巡讲话之前，“市场经济”一直是中国经济领域的“禁语”。
中国当时的经济体制被叫做“计划调节与市场调节相结合的商品经济体制”。对此，普通的中国人都能心领神会，但是，中国“入世”谈判的对手却无法理解：第一、他们不能理解什么是商品经济；第二、他们不相信计划调节和市场调节可以结合。
从宏观层面无法说清楚，中国贸易谈判代表团受一位资深的美国驻华外交官的启示，又改从微观层面，即企业运作层面进行讲解，因为他们认为，企业是国家经济的细胞，一个国家的经济运行体制可以从企业的运行体制中体现出来。为此，他们还从北京请了一批研究企业管理的专家去日内瓦，跟谈判对手解释那位美国驻华外交官的疑问：中国报纸有关企业运行机制的报道说，厂长是中心，书记是核心，两心变一心，那么两心是如何变一心的呢？但是，北京专家的解释反而让谈判对手更加糊涂。最后对方说，你只需告诉我，你们搞不搞市场经济？
此路不通，时任外经贸部部长李岚清就和龙永图商量：能否提出中国的经济体制是有计划的市场经济体制？谈判对手倒是欣然接受，但是回国向中央汇报时被否决了。
1992年春天，邓小平南巡讲话，承认中国要搞市场经济，中国贸易谈判代表团才终于找到了与世界对话的共同语言。
代表中国的谈判者
现在谈判中广泛使用的“双赢”一词，据说最早就是由龙永图舶入中国内地的。
1997年2月，龙永图升任外经贸部副部长，兼任中国“入世”首席谈判代表。而两年前，世界贸易组织正是取代了“临时适用”的关贸总协定，成为一个永久性的正式的国际贸易组织，协调范围从货物贸易扩展到服务贸易和与贸易有关的知识产权等领域。因而，此时的谈判就由“复关”谈判变成了“入世”谈判，而谈判的范围亦相应扩大。
谈判范围扩大的直接后果就是，国内外参与利益博弈的部门大大增多，谈判难度随之增加。
一方面，中国谈判代表团的规模急剧扩大。“实际上各个部门参与的谈判代表,一个方面是代表我们中国谈判,说得难听一点,一方面是监督龙永图是不是出卖了他们部门的利益。”龙永图后来回忆说。
另一方面，谈判对手，特别是美国贸易谈判代表团，列出了一长串问题清单，双方讨价还价最激烈的就有八个：一是农产品[15.54 -3.78% 股吧]市场开放、出口补贴和国内的农业支持问题；二是资本市场的开放问题，当时中国代表团坚决不承诺开放A股等资本市场和实现人民币的自由兑换；三是保险业开放问题；四是电信业开放问题；五是银行业开放问题；六是汽车业开放问题；七是反倾销条款和特殊保障条款；八是外资外贸经营权问题。
龙永图后来接受媒体采访时，反复强调：“谈判是一门妥协的艺术，是形成共识的过程。”据说，现在谈判中广泛使用的“双赢”一词，亦是他最早舶入中国内地的。
龙永图的话是有所指的。
1999年4月，龙永图告诉正在访美的国务院总理朱镕基，中美之间最核心、最困难的谈判难题——中国农产品贸易问题已经达成协议。朱镕基很高兴，立马宣布了这一消息。美国代表团为了赢得国会和企业界的支持,亦通过网络披露了中美协议中对美国有利的谈判内容。但是几天后的5月8日，就发生了美军轰炸中国驻前南斯拉夫大使馆事件。国内一些人于是开始骂龙永图是卖国贼，要求更换中国入世谈判首席代表，而且开始怀疑龙永图当初提出要用英文和美国人小范围一对一谈判的用意。
2005年之后，随着过渡期的结束，入世的各种影响逐渐显现，中国一些产业受到了外资的强大冲击，特别是一波接一波的反倾销浪潮，再次把龙永图推到了究竟是“民族英雄”还是“卖国贼”的争论漩涡之中。
龙永图对此的经典回答是：“我既不是功臣，也不是卖国贼，只是代表中国做了一场谈判。”
“所有问题的最后谈判方案，不是哪一个部门哪一个人说了算，都是由国务院，甚至是中央决定的。谈判到了最后，外经贸部已经起不了决定性作用。”时任外经贸部部长石广生2009年接受媒体采访时说。
2003年，龙永图离开了让他成名的外经贸部，成了刚刚成立一年的非政府组织——亚洲博鳌论坛的秘书长。“我去博鳌就是要建立一个大平台，让全球了解亚洲尤其是中国的崛起。”2006年，龙永图接受北京一家媒体采访时如此解释他当初的选择。
2007年，龙永图联手贵州卫视，推出了一档谈话节目——《论道》。他一次接受《南方周末》记者采访时说，他要论的“道”，“就是怎样使中国加快发展”，他要利用《论道》节目，对世界贸易组织的精神尽可能地再多做一些阐释和说明。
《南方周末》给他此时的身份定义是：布道者。
具有国际化视野的技术官僚
陈竺的学术履历与法国渊源颇深。而法国2000年被世界卫生组织认为是医疗制度最完善的国家。
与周小川、龙永图从体制中出去，海外修学结束后又回到体制中的“海归”高官不同，卫生部部长陈竺和科技部部长万钢则是从体制外“空降”到体制内的“海归”高官。
2007年上半年，中国政坛最引人注目的事件当属两个非中共人士——万钢和陈竺出任国务院组成部门正职。
对于陈竺出任卫生部部长，国内舆论寄予了多重希望。
一些人期待他和万钢的“入阁”能给中国的政治、人事制度变革带来新气象。
另一些人则希望陈竺能利用他的专业知识和国际化视野推进医疗卫生体制改革。不少人通过网络表达了他们的关注点：陈竺出任卫生部部长后能否加快医疗制度的根本性改革，彻底扭转时下老百姓“看病难，看病贵”的局面和趋势？能否革除公共医疗机构行公益之名、行巧取豪夺之实的流弊？能否让卫生部摒弃部门利益，一切以公共利益为出发点和根本点……
2006年9月，由国家发改委和卫生部牵头、14个(后增至16个)部委联合组成医改协调小组，新一轮医改正式启动。
2007年春节前后，医改协调小组委托北京大学、复旦大学、国务院发展研究中心、世界卫生组织、麦肯锡、世界银行六家中外机构进行独立平行的医改方案设计；4月、5月、6月，又增加了北京师范大学、中国人民大学、清华大学-哈佛大学提出的三套方案。
“政府主导”还是“市场主导”，成为各套方案之间争论的焦点。直到5月30日至31日八套方案(当时清华大学和哈佛大学合作提出的第九套方案尚未上报)齐聚钓鱼台国宾馆“过堂”时，“市场主导”的声音仍然占据着上风。
彼时，陈竺正在中国科学院副院长任上。
2007年10月17日至18日，国家发改委牵头召开了南北两大片区“医改座谈会”(亦即“1017会议”)，讨论综合了九套方案而草拟的新医改讨论方案，“政府主导”的观点突然占了上风，“到2020年建立一个覆盖中国城乡全体居民的基本医疗卫生服务制度”的总目标和“坚持公益性”的改革主线基本成型。
“新一轮医改启动之时，卫生部主政的是高强，而医改新方案成形之时，陈竺才上任不久，而且新方案是十几个部委参与起草的，所以陈竺个人对医改新方案的形成所发挥的作用很有限。”长期关注中国医疗卫生体制改革的北京大学光华管理学院教授刘国恩接受《世界博览》记者采访时说，“他所能做的主要就是推进新医改方案的实施、制订更完善的配套方案和建立更好的医疗卫生系统运行体制。”
陈竺1984年至1989年曾就读巴黎第七大学圣•路易医院血液中心实验室，并获得博士学位，回国后一直从事血液学和分子生物学研究，1995年以后，先后当选为中国科学院院士，第三世界科学院院士，美国科学院外籍院士，欧洲艺术、科学和人文学院外籍院士，欧洲科学院外籍院士和法国科学院外籍院士。
陈竺的学术履历与法国渊源颇深。
而法国2000年被世界卫生组织认为是医疗制度最完善的国家。
陈竺出任卫生部部长后，法国是他出访最多的国家。因为他的推动，中法医疗卫生机构展开了频繁的交流与多领域的合作。
但是，中国人民大学卫生医疗体制改革与发展研究中心主任王虎峰接受《世界博览》记者采访时说：“中国的新一轮医改很难说是借鉴了哪一个国家的模式。从医疗保险，到医疗服务体系，再到公立医院改革，应该说，我们是根据中国的实际情况，博采了世界上很多国家的先进经验，形成了中国自己的模式。再说，医改是一个世界性难题，目前还没有哪个国家的医疗卫生体制是尽善尽美的。”
王虎峰的说法或许正好说明，陈竺具有国际化视野的技术官僚的能量正在释放。
新一批“海归”正在中国政坛崛起
是非“海归派”
专访欧美同学会副会长兼商会会长王辉耀和中国现代国际关系研究院经济安全研究中心主任江涌。
本刊记者 |贺梦禹
“海龟”已经成为中国政坛一股不可忽视的力量，而他们对中国国际化造成的影响仍然是一个众说纷纭的话题。就此，《世界博览》专访了欧美同学会副会长兼商会会长王辉耀和中国现代国际关系研究院经济安全研究中心主任江涌。
中国“海龟”从政者，多了还是少了？
《世界博览》：海归从政从中国历史上看情况如何？
王辉耀：“海归派”从政始自清末，辉煌于民国；黯然于“文革”，复兴于当代。与历史上的叱咤风云相比，当代“海归”对中国政坛的最大贡献是专业技能与先进理念。
综观中国近代历史，“海归”人士都在中国历届政府各个部门和机构中发挥了积极的和突出的作用。在孙中山先生组建的临时内阁中，归国留学生在9个部的 18名部长、副部长中占了15个席位。从1912年至1928年，北洋政府先后更换了32届内阁，历任国务总理和内阁成员中分别有41.93%和 51.37%的人为留学人员出身；其中20世纪20年代的24任外交部长几乎全为欧美归国留学人员。
中华民国成立后，留学欧美、日本的留学生先后归国服务于外交界。据1935年版的《中国外交年鉴》记载，在外交部86名重要职员中，留学生出身的就有73人，约占85%。1948年出版的《中国当代名人传》中，共收录198名国民党党政军要人，有留学经历的就有88位，占44.4%。
留学生对20世纪中国共产主义运动的发展也有着重要而深远的影响。从马克思主义的传播到中国共产党的成立，留学生都发挥了极其重要的作用。中国共产党和新中国的诞生，也同“海归”结下了不解之缘。中国共产党1921年7月1日召开成立大会，出席代表12人中有8人是归国留学生，占2/3。中华人民共和国10位开国元帅中有6位在国外留学或工作过。中华人民共和国第一届中央人民政府主席、副主席和政府委员共63人，在国外留学或工作过的有42人，占 2/3。中共第一代领导核心即时称毛刘周朱陈林邓的7大常委中，除毛泽东外，其余6人均有在国外学习和工作的经历。中共第二代领导核心中，邓小平曾经先后多年留学法国、苏联，他后来在中国对外开放和改革中发挥了决定性的作用。中共的第三代领导核心中，江泽民、李鹏、李岚清等都曾留学前苏联，至于中央各部委及地方各省市负责人中留苏(东欧)学生(如钱其琛、邹家骅等)也有相当数量。
《世界博览》：海归从政在其他国家和地区情形怎样？
王辉耀：众所周知，近代以来，后进国家向先进国家派遣留学生的根本目的，是希冀他们学成归来，把所学知识和本领奉献给自己的国家。据统计，世界上担任国家元首的，有留学经历者达到95人，超过50%，即是一个有力的明证。即使在亚洲的许多国家和地区中，领导人由“海归”担任的也不在少数。大家熟悉的有日本前首相鸠山由纪夫，留学美国斯坦福大学；新加坡前总理李光耀，留学英国牛津大学；现任总理李显龙，留学美国哈佛大学；香港特首曾荫权，留学美国哈佛大学；香港政务司长唐英年、前政务司长梁锦松也都是留学生出身；澳门前特首何厚铧，留学加拿大约克大学；台湾前“行政院长”连战，留学美国康乃尔大学；台湾省前省长宋楚瑜也在美留学；台湾现任领导人马英九，留学美国哈佛大学等。据《亚洲周刊》报道，在台湾的重要政治人物中，至少有8成以上都有留学海外的经历。如今台湾政治经济文化界许多挑大梁的精英，拥有海外高等学历者占很大比例。中国台湾地区从上世纪70年代开始经济起飞，也得力于一大批留美归来的专业技术骨干和经营管理人才。海归人士在战后日本的政治经济崛起和科技挺进中也扮演了重要角色，包括2003年诺贝尔物理学奖获奖者小柴昌俊教授在内，日本多名诺贝尔奖折桂者就是不折不扣的“海归派”，日本著名的战略管理大师大潜研一，也是知名的“海归”人物，是美国麻省理工学院的工科博士。
《世界博览》：海归从政高官目前在中国政府中所占的比重多大？
王辉耀：虽然不少“海归”进入中国党政组织担任重要职务，但是目前中国高层领导中的“海归”人数总体上看还是很少，和国际上特别是和亚洲许多国家相比还是少数。据美国布鲁金斯中国问题高级研究员李成教授在2005年所做的一份研究，中国10届人大这届政府行政部门中，副部级以上的领导干部有581 名，其中有“海归”背景的只有48名，比例只有8.2%。在中共十六大356名中央委员和候补中央委员中，有“海归”背景的只有6.2%，和韩国、日本、东南亚以及港澳台地区内阁成员中“海归”占相当大的比例差距还很大。这显然还不是十分适应全球化时代中国日益频繁的国际交往与合作以及充分应对各种错综复杂的国际局面的需要。
“海归”高官对中国的影响，究竟是利大还是弊大？
《世界博览》：中国政府吸引“海归”从政主要是基于什么考虑？
王辉耀：改革开放以来，随着中国国家建设和国际化程度的加深，国家对“海归”人士开始越来越重视。2007年全国人大和国务院通过了任命万钢和陈竺分别担任科技部和卫生部部长，就是很好的迹象。
目前，回国的“海归”已有70多万人，他们中有许多中国急需的国际化人才，这对于中国正在迅速提升的国际地位，加强中国对外经济政治文化的交往，提高国家政府官员的效率和执政能力，都有着十分积极的意义。从更广泛的意义上讲，“海归”也应逐步摆脱以往对政治的冷淡心态，与国内各路精英一起，积极参与政府部门的推荐与招聘、身边的社会公共事务，还可以以参政议政的形式，为国家、社区和大众做出应有的贡献。政协和人大也可以考虑一个“海归”的界别，欧洲许多国家甚至允许还在海外的侨民成为国会的代表。
江涌：政府吸纳什么样的人，归根到底还是根据能力来确定的。你的能力和你的一套理论在中国管用，符合中国的实际情况，那肯定是要唯才是举。德很重要，否则可能是“危险品”。但问题在于，很多“海归”连是不是“才”都很难说。跟自然科学领域衡量人才的能力和学术水平的标准不同，社会科学领域一向都有点说不清楚，衡量能力的标准相对简单。有的博士回来根本就只是一个光环，很多假学历现在都被发现了，商界有，比如唐骏，政界也有，只不过没有像商界那样被媒体炒得那么厉害。
的确，“海归”高官对中国经济影响深远。但是在扩大对外开放、与国际经济接轨的名义下，自由化、市场化、私有化、国际化等这些“华盛顿共识”被中国广泛深入地贯彻与执行，也是当今中国经济、社会问题与矛盾的源头所在。多年来，我们基本不问“德”与“才”就给了财经“海归”很多机会、很多荣誉、很高的地位。权利与义务应当对等，如今应当是施加相应的责任、约束的时候了。
《世界博览》：“海归”高官给中国政治带来了哪些新东西？
王辉耀：以科技部部长万钢为例，他是近30年来第一位在海外旅居16年以上的“海归”人士担任正部级高官。以往各届政府中，留学归国人员出身的部长也有，如前教育部长周济、中国银监会主席刘明康、前科技部长徐冠华等均是留学归国人员。但他们均是在海外留学后立即归国或者短期工作后归国，基本上属于从体制内去又回到体制内的。而万钢却是在海外留学6年，工作定居10年后才回国工作的。这在中国以往的正部级干部任命上几乎没有先例。像万钢这样海外留学和工作多年的“海归”人士能担任科技部这样重要的行政部门部长，充分说明国家高层海纳百川的宽阔胸襟以及对“海归”人士的高度信任，对许多尚在海外的留学人员和“海归”中占大部分的体制外的“海归”有极大的现实意义和深远的未来影响。
江涌：积极影响的很多，消极的也不少，“海归”在不同的部门扮演的角色肯定是有不同的。在有的部门，“海归”的力量很强，所以影响就很大，有的部门比较弱，所以影响就会小。现在在中国政府里“海归”已经很多了，像发改委，财政部就有不少“海归”，但是，这些部门里“海归”不占有强势，所以扮演的角色就不是太明显。在财经部门特别是金融部门，比如在央行、银监会，金融“海归”就很强势。
在这些部门，“海归”已经形成了一个独特的话语体系。据内部人士透露，在人民银行里面，曾经有一段时间以说英语为荣，说汉语不行的，领导批阅文件，还时不时用英语。他们搞的货币政策，基本东西都是美国那一套。现在我们看来这一套东西在中国就有些水土不服。客观上，的确给中国造成越来越大的麻烦，甚至是给中国造成一些经济损失，比如货币主权的侵蚀与国民财富的流失。大家都知道“四大银行”是国有资产，但是国资委管不了四大银行。多年来，共同的价值与利益取向，在中国形成了一个极大极强的金融利益集团。为了强化集团的利益，当然集团利益和部门利益是结合在一起的，就搞一个“武大郎开店——不容高人”。当今中国金融领域的种种问题，中国经济虚热实冷，金融利益集团脱不了干系。
《世界博览》：“海归”高官所产生的消极作用是因为水土不服吗？
江涌：我认为一方面是因为他们把海外的那一套完全搬过来，所以在中国就会水土不服。比如他们用的都是美国芝加哥的那一套自由主义的东西，这在中国肯定是不对路数的，就像当初以王明为代表的留苏派把苏俄的理论照搬到中国来，给中国革命造成了极大的损失一样。现在，看看中国的宏观调控，金融部门(比如人民银行)全是按照美国的路数来搞的。他们一手拿着自由主义教科书，一手拿着统计部门的数据，就搞宏观调控了，而理论与数据都有问题，所以房价越调越高，通货膨胀越调越高，宏观调控越调越乱。仅凭经济常识，你就能感觉到他们搞的那一套是完全不行的。说起来，是因为他们不了解中国国情，一回国就当上高官，高高在上，脱离群众，脱离实际，脱离国情。
《世界博览》：“海归”从政会成为一种潮流吗？
王辉耀：海外研究中国大陆政治的学者认为，在西方国家留学过的“海归派”，开始在大陆政治经济舞台崛起，正逐渐影响大陆未来的政经形势，成为大陆政治体制改革和政府职能转变的推手。而且随着更多留学人员在政府机关晋升司局级干部和部级干部，以及在中、外资企业任要职的“海归派”越来越多，在同本土文化与官场文化逐渐融合后，这股强大的冲击力不可忽视，将会带来中国政坛的新气象。中国要在全球化的竞争中提升中国的外交地位，提升中国国际形象，提升中国的软实力，加强中国与世界各国沟通和打交道的能力，中国必须要充分利用和发挥中国现有的与正在海外储藏起来的巨大的国际人才库。
江涌：这个不好说。在过去的这么多年，我们的确给了“海归”很多的机会、很好的待遇，但是我个人认为，这与他们的实际能力与贡献是不相适应的。中国人从鸦片战争以来一直都崇洋媚外，原来从海外拿个博士回来就能得到副司级，至少也是正处级待遇。现在可能好一点，没过去那么容易了，更多的还是凭能力说话。

Biggest Distressed Debt Investor Marks Europe With 19% Returns

Biggest Distressed Debt Investor Marks Europe With 19% Returns
Share Business ExchangeTwitterFacebook| Email | Print | A A A By [bn:PRSN=1876218] Gillian Wee []

June 17 (Bloomberg) -- Howard Marks was failing miserably. It was 1977, and the research group he oversaw at Citibank had recommended Nifty 50 stocks that lost 90 percent of their value over the previous decade.

Then Peter Vermilye, Citibank’s chief investment officer, gave Marks an option: He could quit research and start a fund focusing on convertible bonds, a niche where neither the New York bank nor Marks had any experience. He jumped at the chance.

“It changed my life,” says Marks, who with his light-brown tortoiseshell glasses and spiky, sandy-colored hair looks younger than his 65 years. “If he hadn’t pushed me out of the research job, where would I be today?”

Marks is now chairman of Oaktree Capital Management LP, the biggest distressed-debt investor in the world, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its August issue. Oaktree oversees $85.4 billion for pension funds from Massachusetts to Florida and the world’s biggest sovereign-wealth funds, such as China Investment Corp. Oaktree’s 17 distressed-debt funds have averaged annual gains of 19 percent after fees for the past 22 years -- about 7 percentage points better than its peers tracked by Boston-based consulting firm Cambridge Associates LLC.

‘Most Important Thing’

Oaktree is likely to get even more prominent if it goes ahead with a plan to list shares on the New York Stock Exchange, perhaps as early as this summer. In May 2007, Oaktree raised about $1 billion, selling a 15 percent stake on a private Goldman Sachs Group Inc. exchange open to sophisticated investors. The transaction valued the whole company at $6.3 billion.

Marks has come so far from his days at Citibank that he’s now selling his investing philosophy in a book, The Most Important Thing, which was published in May by Columbia University Press. In an interview in his downtown Los Angeles office, from which he has a view of the iconic Hollywood sign, Marks says his strategy is to find bargains such as troubled media company Tribune Co., movie theater chain Regal Entertainment Group and CIT Group Inc., the small-business lender that emerged from bankruptcy in 2009.

“We don’t expect to be able to hit the bottom,” Marks says. “All we care about is that we’re buying cheap. If it gets cheaper, we buy more. Eventually, it’ll work out -- so long as we are right.”

Conflicts of Interest

Marks has built his career on choosing bargains correctly, investors say.

“The secret is having the capital and courage when things look pretty gloomy to say, ‘This will work,’” says George Siguler, whose New York-based Siguler Guff & Co. manages about $10 billion in private equity and distressed debt, including investments in Oaktree. “They raise much bigger funds when they see the timing or opportunity is great and much smaller funds at other times. It’s a discipline not everybody has.”

Once Marks takes Oaktree public, it may be harder for him to maintain that self-control, Oaktree investor James Hoover says. “There are inherent conflicts of interest when an investment firm goes public,” says Hoover, founder of Dauphin Capital Partners and chief investment officer of Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania.

“To appease shareholders of the company, you’re going to expand the product offerings. You might be less discriminating about the size of the funds. The bigger the size, the more fees are paid.”

Mixed Record

Private-equity stocks have a mixed record on the NYSE, too. Blackstone Group LP, the world’s largest private-equity firm, went public in 2007, shortly before the global financial crisis, raising $4.1 billion. As of June 16, its shares remained 46 percent below their IPO price, even after gaining 18 percent year-to-date. Apollo Global Management LLC fell 16 percent from its March 29 offering, which raised $565 million.

The exception is KKR & Co., which went public in July 2010 and had risen 47 percent as of mid-June in New York trading. Marks declined to comment on news reports in May that valued Oaktree, of which he owns about one-sixth, at $8 billion to $9 billion.

An IPO would also come at a time when opportunities for making money in distressed investing are scarcer than they were a few years ago. In January and April, Marks returned a total of $4.4 billion to investors in his $11 billion OCM Opportunities Fund VIIB -- the biggest distressed-debt fund in history.

Investing After Lehman

Oaktree had raised money for the fund in May 2008 and invested about $6 billion of it in the most senior debt of failing companies during the 15 weeks following Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.’s bankruptcy in September of that year. Oaktree paid roughly 50 cents on the dollar for the debt and generated a gross annual return of 31 percent for the fund since its inception. Marks and Oaktree partner Bruce Karsh declined to name the companies whose debt the fund bought.

In April, Marks finished raising about $2.6 billion for his newest distressed fund, which is 76 percent smaller than Opportunities Fund VIIB.

Not all of Oaktree’s forays have been successful. Three of its funds that used leverage had their losses amplified following the market’s decline in 2008, forcing investors to allocate more money as their value plunged. Oaktree is now liquidating the funds -- a high-yield-plus fund, one in European credit opportunities and one focused on Japan -- even after they rebounded last year, returning more than 10 percent after fees, according to Oaktree’s year-end letter to investors.

$8 Billion to Invest

Oaktree has more than $8 billion in so-called dry powder to invest, about 15 percent of the $55 billion in total capital available for distressed managers around the world, says Tim Friedman, spokesman for London-based research group Preqin Ltd. Aside from having 40 percent of its investments in distressed assets, 25 percent is in high-yield debt, while 18 percent comes from so-called control investing, under which Oaktree takes ownership of firms by buying their debt or equity. In all, Oaktree now runs 16 different strategies.

“His investment philosophy is simple and unwavering: ‘buy low and sell high,’” says bond manager Jeffrey Gundlach, who knows Marks from his days at TCW Group Inc., where Gundlach was investment chief. “I’ve heard him say time and time again: ‘There’s no such thing as a bad asset. It’s a question of pricing.’” When Gundlach started his own firm, DoubleLine Capital LP, Oaktree took a 22 percent stake.

Rego Park, Queens

Marks formed his investing philosophy in the 1980s, after Vermilye approved his transfer to Los Angeles, where he ran Citibank’s convertible- and high-yield-bond funds. At the time, Michael Milken was pioneering the junk-bond market that fueled a boom in deal making based on debt. Marks moved to TCW in 1985, running two funds, one investing in high-yield bonds and the other in convertible securities.

Raised in Rego Park, a middle-class neighborhood of attached redbrick homes in Queens, New York, Marks was the son of an accountant and a homemaker. He attended the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, where he abandoned plans to become an accountant after taking some finance classes.

He minored in Japanese Studies, where he learned about mujo, which he defines as the acceptance of the inevitability of change, helping to form his investment philosophy.

“It was the first time I was really stimulated by what I was doing academically,” says Marks, who later obtained an MBA in accounting and marketing from the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago. “The teacher required writing. And that’s when I started to care about writing.” Marks endowed a writing center at Penn that was named after him in 2007.

Rambling Memos

At TCW, Marks began sending out rambling memos to customers about his investing philosophy, interspersed with anecdotes about his family. In 1995, Marks and six partners, including Karsh, started Oaktree, the English translation of the name of his Santa Barbara, California, weekend home, Las Encinitas.

His first $2.5 billion came from TCW, which hired Oaktree to continue managing the funds Marks had run there. Now, 39 percent of the money Oaktree manages comes from public funds, while 29 percent is from corporations. The rest of the clients include endowments, foundations, insurance companies, wealthy individuals and mutual funds.

While Marks is the public face of Oaktree, Karsh is the “quiet secret” behind the scenes, says Ken Moelis, CEO of investment bank Moelis & Co., which worked on some Oaktree deals. “If you say the name Bruce, people know you’re talking about Bruce Springsteen,” Moelis says. “There’s one Bruce in music and one Bruce in distressed. He’s just a solid guy who does his homework and thinks through timing.”

Karsh Joins

Karsh was 31 in 1987, when he pitched the idea of a distressed fund to Marks. Karsh, a former assistant to billionaire philanthropist Eli Broad, whose insurance company SunAmerica Inc. had been a TCW client, joined TCW that year and helped to raise $100 million for its first distressed fund, which started up in 1988.

William T. Spitz, former chief investment officer of Vanderbilt University, invested in Marks’s second distressed- debt fund, which was started in 1990. Spitz saw an opportunity to buy firms’ debt that had lost value as the junk-bond market collapsed following a securities fraud scandal that sent Milken to jail for 22 months and the 1989 breakdown of a leveraged- buyout deal for United Airlines Inc. Gains on the fund before fees were more than 40 percent a year.

“He was one of the first people smart enough to look at less-efficient asset categories,” says Spitz, who worked for Marks at Citibank before investing with him. “There weren’t many managers who did it, and there weren’t many institutions investing.”

Betting on Movie Theaters

Oaktree began investing in movie theater chains in 1999. Oaktree teamed up with Denver billionaire Philip Anschutz to take control of Regal Entertainment, buying $800 million of senior bank debt and then forcing the company into a prepackaged bankruptcy. Within two years, the partners earned back their original investment, along with a $715 million special dividend and a 78 percent stake in a company valued at $2.8 billion, according to the Journal of Private Equity, a trade publication. Oaktree funds also bought stakes in Landmark Theatres and Loews Cineplex Entertainment.

It was only after the dot-com bust that Marks gained notoriety for his memos. On Jan. 3, 2000, he sounded a warning in a piece entitled “Bubble.com.”

‘Freight Train’

“To say technology, Internet and telecommunications stocks are too high and about to decline is comparable today to standing in front of a freight train,” wrote Marks, whose office bookshelves are peppered with investment books such as Yale University endowment chief David Swensen’s Pioneering Portfolio Management as well as copies of several books about a drug smuggler of no relation named Howard Marks. “To say they have benefited from a boom of colossal proportions and should be examined skeptically is something I feel like I owe you.” As markets crashed in March, he received his first response in 10 years.

TCW’s managers seized on the opportunity, Karsh says.

“This was a tech, telecom bubble that burst; there were a lot of power companies and bankruptcies of companies involved in corporate scandals like Enron, WorldCom and Adelphia,” Karsh says. “For two years in a row, there were double-digit default rates in the high-yield-bond market. We had a sense it was coming. We raised our biggest fund ever and took maximum advantage.” In 2002, Marks bought debt of downgraded telecommunications companies including Qwest Communications International Inc. and Nortel Networks Corp.

Newspaper Investment

A few years later, as the newspaper industry faltered, Oaktree invested an undisclosed amount in Tribune’s senior loans, which the Chicago Tribune publisher had used in 2007 to buy out shareholders and go private. Oaktree is one of three lenders that hold more than a combined $3.38 billion of the roughly $8 billion in loans Tribune took out as part of the LBO, according to court documents.

Under Tribune’s proposed reorganization plan, the three lenders will trade the debt they hold for at least a 30 percent stake in the newspaper publisher once it exits bankruptcy. Oaktree’s share will be at least 10 percent, according to documents filed with the Federal Communications Commission. Marks displays a figurine of a dodo in his office, a 2009 gift from Tribune Chairman Sam Zell. “This one is obviously about survival of the fittest in a tough capital market,” Marks says of the gift.

Protein Diet

At times, Oaktree will invest in a single company in multiple ways. In July 2009, Oaktree joined a group of investors bailing out CIT with a $3 billion emergency loan after the U.S. declined to rescue the New York lender for a second time. Oaktree also participated in an exit facility and bought CIT’s bonds.

Today, Marks divides his time between London, Los Angeles and New York, sending his investing missives to Oaktree’s 1,800 clients worldwide. He keeps in shape with calisthenics and a yoga-inspired stretching regimen. After finding the vegan diet prescribed by his wife, Nancy, to be too rigid to follow while traveling, he’s sticking with the protein, vegetables and beans suggested by his son, Andrew, who works at a hedge fund in New York. His daughter, Jane, works in New York too, in the art world.

Oaktree is targeting its newest investment pools in small and midsize deals in Europe and in real estate, the next fronts for distressed investors, two people briefed on the firm’s plans say. Oaktree believes companies in Europe, where several countries have been forced to restructure their debt, are likely to come under pressure to sell assets to raise capital, one person says. Distressed investing in Europe has been less competitive than in the U.S., the person says.

Europe, Real Estate

Oaktree’s European fund will aim to raise $2 billion to $3 billion. Oaktree is also eyeing property transactions in the U.S., where it expects owners to sell their holdings after paying top dollar for them in the real-estate boom of 2005 to 2007, the other person says. That fund will total about $1 billion. Marks declined to give details of those funds.

“There are times when it is important to invest cautiously, and there are times when it’s important to invest aggressively,” Marks says. “A big part of the job is knowing where we are and choosing between those two. We believe that compared to one year, two years, maybe three years ago, this is the time to invest cautiously.”

When Marks’s company does its IPO, bargain-hunting investors will have to make a similar decision: whether or not the time is right to buy Oaktree stock.

-- With assistance from Seth Lubove in Los Angeles, Pierre Paulden in New York, Sree Vidya Bhaktavatsalam in Boston and Steven Church in Wilmington. Editors: Laura Colby, Jonathan Neumann.

To contact the reporter on this story: Gillian Wee in New York at