Learning the ropes

China has a history of quasi-securitizations stretching back to the late 1990s, when toll-road operators and utilities issued financial instruments with some of the characteristics of true asset-backed securities. In 2004, Credit Suisse and Chinese bank ICBC completed another proto-securitization—a Rmb2.6 billion bundle of non-performing and sub-performing loans from the bank's Ningbo branch. By Elizabeth Ryan