"Investor Network" Meng Hong

According to the administrative penalty information released by Qingdao Banking and Insurance Supervision Bureau on the evening of April 28th, Qingdao Rural Commercial Bank Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Green Agricultural Commercial Bank", 002958.SZ) was found guilty of five violations, resulting in a total forfeiture of 31.87 million yuan, and seven responsible persons were given a warning and fined 610000 yuan.

According to the decision on administrative penalty, there are some illegal and illegal facts in Qingnong Commercial Bank, such as the untimely adjustment of the risk classification of corporate loans, the conditions of issuing guaranteed loans to related parties are better than those of other borrowers, imprudent management of working capital loans, imprudent post-loan management, and so on.

At the same time, Qingnong Commercial Bank was fined 1 million yuan for imprudent credit management of interbank business, and Li Chunlei was given a warning and fined 100000 yuan.

For regulatory penalties, Youth Agricultural Bank issued a notice that: this punishment-related business mainly took place before 2020, most of the problems have been rectified.

In fact, this is not the first time that Youth Farmers has received such a large fine. In January 2022, Qingnong Commercial Bank issued a notice saying that it had recently received a written decision on administrative punishment from the Qingdao Regulatory Bureau. The five-level classification of the bank's loans is inaccurate, the risk control after investment business is not in place, the behavior of employees is not controlled effectively, the loan transfer margin draws a bank acceptance bill, the effectiveness of data governance is missing, the liquidity fund loan is misappropriated, real estate loan management is seriously imprudent, credit card overdraft funds flow into non-consumption areas and other problems are fined a total of 44.1 million yuan.

The ratio of non-performing loans rises in 2022

Judging from the two fines of Qingnong Commercial Bank, the problem of loan violations is more serious, which inevitably has an impact on the quality of the company's assets.

According to the 2022 annual report disclosed on April 28, as of December 31, 2022, the bank's non-performing loan balance was 5.26 billion yuan, and the non-performing loan ratio was 2.19%, up 0.45% from the end of last year.

In response, Qingnong Commercial Bank explained that the main reason for the rise in the non-performing loan ratio is that the real estate market and the upstream and downstream are still in a period of adjustment in 2022, and non-performing loans in the real estate and construction industries have increased.

In addition, according to the company's annual report, Qingnong Commercial Bank set aside a credit impairment loss of 4.7 billion yuan, an increase of 25.18% over the same period last year. Qingnong Commercial Bank said that credit impairment losses on loans and advances are the largest components of credit impairment losses. In 2022, the credit impairment loss of loans and advances calculated by Qingnong Commercial Bank was 4.599 billion yuan, an increase of 862 million yuan over the same period last year. The company explained that it was mainly caused by Qingnong Commercial Bank to increase the write-off and disposal of non-performing assets, and at the same time, according to the market operating environment and other factors, increase the intensity of provision and enhance the ability of risk offset.

Overall, the performance of Qingnong Commercial Bank was under pressure in 2022, with operating income of 9.944 billion yuan, down 3.43% from the same period last year, and net profit of 2.346 billion yuan, down 24.11% from the same period last year.

Judging from the income composition of Youth Agricultural Bank in 2022, the bank's net interest income fell 2.6 per cent year-on-year to 7.839 billion yuan last year, while non-interest income fell 6.39 per cent to 2.105 billion yuan.

With regard to the decline in revenue, the company explained that "the financing cost of the real economy has been further reduced. At the same time, due to the repricing effect of loans and changes in market interest rates, the average yield on loans and advances has declined compared with the same period last year." the net interest margin narrowed. The bank's net interest margin fell 16 basis points to 2 per cent year-on-year, according to the annual report.

In view of the sluggish performance of the company last year, Qingnong Commercial Bank decided not to carry out cash dividends, not to send shares, not to increase share capital.

It is worth noting that this is the first time that Qingnong Commercial Bank has decided not to pay dividends since it was listed in 2019. The company's dividends per share in the first four years were 0.15 yuan, 0.15 yuan, 0.15 yuan and 0.10 yuan respectively.

In addition, in the 2022 annual report, Qingnong Commercial Bank also mentioned that Sun Congcheng, the company's supervisor, was issued a warning letter last year because his relatives formed short-term trading, which was recorded in the integrity file of the securities and futures market.

According to the decision on administrative supervision measures issued at that time, Sun Congcheng, as the then supervisor of Qingnong Commercial Bank, his daughter Sun Yijia bought 20,000 shares of Qingnong Commercial Bank on April 14, 2022 and 2000 shares on June 27, 2022. Sun Siping, Sun Congcheng's father, sold 160000 shares of Qingnong Commercial Bank on September 6, 2022. The above acts violate the relevant provisions of Article 44 of the Securities Law and constitute short-term transactions. The above acts violate the relevant provisions of Article 44 of the Securities Law and constitute short-term transactions. According to the second paragraph of Article 170 of the Securities Law, Qingdao Securities Regulatory Bureau decided to take regulatory measures to issue a warning letter against it, which should be recorded in the integrity files of the securities and futures market.

In fact, prior to this, Qingnong Commercial Bank also received a warning letter for the short-term trading of the company's employees' relatives. In September 2021, Zhu Guangyuan, chief information officer of Qingnong Commercial Bank, received a warning letter from Qingdao Securities Regulatory Bureau. According to the warning letter, Zhu Guangyuan's father, Zhu Piyu, bought 2400 shares and 500 shares of Qingnong Commercial Bank respectively on June 29 and August 6, 2021, with a total transaction value of 12274 yuan, and sold 2900 shares of the company on August 18, 2021, with a transaction value of 11513 yuan.

The loan of nearly 900 million yuan is difficult to recover.

On April 28, in addition to issuing the 2022 annual report and the first quarterly report of 2023, Youth Farmers Bank also issued two "announcements on litigation matters".

These two notices are related to the dispute over the financial borrowing contract of the bank's Hong Kong Central Road Branch and Barone International Construction Group Limited (Barone Construction Group Limited) and Barone International Group Limited (Barone International) respectively. According to the announcement, the Hong Kong Central Road Branch, who applied for enforcement, applied to the people's Court of Shinan District of Qingdao for compulsory enforcement, which has recently been accepted by the court.

According to one of the notices, the bank applied to the court for enforcement, including requiring Barong Construction to repay the principal of the loan to the Hong Kong Central Road Branch of 350 million yuan, and overdue interest and penalty interest totaling about 17.6957 million yuan.

According to another notice, the bank applied to the court for enforcement, including requiring Barone International to repay the principal of the loan to the Hong Kong Central Road Branch of 526 million yuan, and overdue interest and penalty interest totaling about 24.7481 million yuan.

In other words, the principal of 876 million yuan of loans issued by Youth Farmers' Bank to Barone Construction and Barone International can not be recovered normally.

Public documents show that Barong Construction and Barone International are both owned by the Barone system, and the two companies share shares in each other. The group started as a clothing and real estate business, and its founder, Jiang Junping, was once the richest man in Qingdao. The territory of "Barone" enterprises covers finance, international trade, platform economy, cold chain, food, clothing, construction and other sectors.

Prior to this, Barone Construction and Barone International repeatedly pledged and pledged the shares of Youth Agriculture Bank, which once attracted the attention of the outside world.

According to the first quarterly report of Qingnong Commercial Bank, Barong International and Barong Construction are the sixth and seventh largest shareholders of the bank respectively. As concerted actors, they together hold 7.16% of the shares of Qingnong Commercial Bank, which is actually the third largest shareholder. second only to Qingdao Guoxin Group and Qingdao Urban Construction Group. Prior to this, Barong International and Barong Construction have passively reduced their holdings in Green Agriculture Commercial Bank for many times.

As can be seen from the above table, most of the shares held by Barong International and Barong Construction have been pledged, and the 3.11% stake held by Barong Construction has been frozen.

In fact, before the listing of Qingnong Commercial Bank, "Barone" shareholders began to pledge the bank's shares, and has been in a high proportion of pledge state. In March 2019, Qingnong Commercial Bank listed on A shares. On April 22 of that year, Barong Group had previously pledged 37.06% of the shares of Everbright Bank Qingdao Branch to be unpledged, and on April 23, this part of the shares were pledged to the above-mentioned banks for financing. Since then, the "Barone system" has been changing repeatedly between the pledge and the pledge.

Since the second half of 2022, the liquidity risk of "Barone" enterprises has been gradually exposed, and the company and its founder Jiang Junping have become the executees one after another.

Enterprise investigation shows that since the beginning of this year, as of April 26, Jiang Junping has been executed for 12 times in a row, with a total amount of 1.233 billion yuan.

However, it can be seen from the 2022 annual report that as of December 31, 2022, Qingnong Commercial Bank had issued a total of 1.207 billion yuan in loans and advances to the "Barong system", which was much higher than the 876 million yuan that Youth Agricultural Commercial Bank applied to the court for enforcement. With regard to the current operating situation of the "Barone system", it is also a question mark how to recover the remaining loans of the Green Agricultural Bank in the "Barone system".

A relevant official of Qingnong Commercial Bank said earlier, "shareholders have the right to pledge, transfer and dispose of their shares in accordance with the law." Due to the need for financing, Barone Group pledged its shares in other financial institutions, and then was sued by other financial institutions because of debt problems, resulting in shares frozen by the court, which reflects the operating conditions of Barone Group itself, and has nothing to do with our operating conditions. The mortgage of the loan involved in the lawsuit is relatively sufficient, and the loss is expected to be small. "

In addition, judging from the first quarter report of Qingnong Commercial Bank this year, the company's performance has obviously picked up. The bank's operating income in the first quarter was 2.672 billion yuan, an increase of 180 million yuan over the same period last year, an increase of 7.23 percent, and 13.6 percent higher than the same period in 2022. The return net profit was 994 million yuan, an increase of 50 million yuan over the same period last year, an increase of 5.58 percent, which was 2.5 percent higher than that of the same period in 2022. The non-performing loan ratio was 2.09%, down 0.1 percentage points from the beginning of the year. (produced by thinking Finance) ■