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Financial stocks took a global beating yesterday as investors weighed up the fallout from US energy giant Enron filing for bankruptcy with US$16.8 billion (HK$131 billion) in debts.
HSBC Holdings fell 1.32 per cent to $93.25 on fears that it had extended loans to Enron which an analyst said could be "in the hundreds of millions".
"HSBC has been hurt by people talking about the Enron thing," said Peter Chau Ming-tak, a fund manager at TAL CEF Global Asset Management.
Japan's Nikkei 225 index tumbled 3.05 per cent to 10,370.62. The nation's second-largest banking group, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp, said it had US$210 million in exposure to the Enron group, while another of the big four, Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi, admitted it had US$248.1 million.
In London, the FTSE-100 ended the day 0.75 per cent lower at 5,164.60 points. Barclays Bank was down two per cent in early trade and Royal Bank of Scotland down 2.5 per cent. The banks refused to comment on a report that Barclays had £300 million (HK$3.3 billion) in exposure to Enron and the Royal Bank of Scotland £600 million.
In its latest results filing, HSBC said it had US$4 billion exposure to a sector in the US which includes energy, transportation and agriculture. That was relatively small out of a global loan book of about US$300 billion, said Patrick Ho Wai-wa, a banking analyst at BNP Paribas Peregrine.
An HSBC spokesman said: "We don't comment on individual cases."
I do hope there is nothing to the old adage things run in threes. Everything looks like it is manageable at present. |
