A senior Chinese official who oversees the country's largest state-owned enterprises has publicly condemned western investment banks for “maliciously” peddling complicated derivative products that caused huge losses for Chinese companies over the last year.
In Beijing's strongest criticism on the matter to date, Li Wei, vice director of the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, singled out Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch and Citigroup in a long and highly critical article published in the latest issue of an official Communist Party newspaper.
The large losses suffered by Chinese state companies were “closely associated with the intentionally complex and highly leveraged products that were fraudulently peddled by international investment banks with evil intentions,” Mr Li said. “To a certain extent some international investment banks were the chief criminals and the root of ruin for the Chinese enterprises who encountered this financial derivatives Waterloo.”