Based on CSRC’s data, about 268 firms queuing for IPO in A-share markets chose to quit the IPO process up until 31 May, 2013. 109 of these firms are supported by local VCs and PEs, which take about 41% of the total number of the firms who applied for IPOs in A-share markets. About RMB 8.45 bn investments from local VCs and PEs are locked into these pre-IPO firms, which is challenging for the VC and PE firms who might have been expecting an exit.

The tough supervision of the CSRC is one of the main reasons pre-IPO firms have left the process and only very few meet the standards and of those who did, the worry is that many have cooperated with local stock investment institutions to fake their financial performances to get them listed.

From the data released by People’s Bank of China for the first quarter 2013, the transaction volume of bankcards has reached to 100.27 trillion RMB, which is a 7.7% increase from the first quarter in 2012. The accumulated credit card issuance reached 343 million, which gives a credit card holding per capita is 0.26.

According to PBOC, at the end of 2013 Q1, China’s bankcard consumption transaction volume and value rose rapidly by 44% and 60%, respectively. Interbank transactions made up the majority of total transaction volume and value – accounting for 56% and 77%, respectively. At the end of 2013 Q1, the total circulation of bankcard in China reached 3.6 billion, increasing by 19% year-on-year, with 3.3 billion debit cards and 343 million credit cards. The average bankcard consumption per person increased by 60% to 4900 RMB.

A few weeks ago, we looked at the growth of wealth management in China – a big aspect of wealth management is the Trust industry, which we look at today.

Across multiple metrics, the Chinese futures market grew rapidly from 2006 to 2012. Total assets have grown by 6.5 times over the 6 years, net assets 7 fold and net profit growth by nearly 22 times in 2012 compared to 2006. So it is quite clear that Chinese futures industry is growing at a high speed during the past few years and it is highly likely to expand even faster due to the opening up of the markets.

Based on data released from the PBOC, bank card issuance in Q1 has increased 4.5% compared to 2012 Q4 to reach a total of 3.69 billion cards issued. Within the issued 3.69 billion cards, the total number of debit cards issued was 3.65 billion and total credit card issuance reached to 0.34 billion. From Q1 2012, the issued bank cards have had a steady growing trend which indicates that bank cards have becoming more and more Important as a payment method in China. Domestically, 10.6 billion bank card transactions happened in Q1 2013, and the total transaction value was 100.27 trillion yuan which increased 23.9% and 19.3% compared to Q1 2012.

According to iResearch, the total transaction value of China’s 3rd party online payment in 2013 Q, for the first time, declined slightly from last quarter’s 1,065 billion to 1,018 billion, -4.4% quarter-on-quarter. After the staggering growth over the last ten years, China’s 3rd party online payment market has entered a more mature stage of development. This dip largely resulted from the increasing commoditized and homogenous products and services – 3rd party players need more innovative products to improve their services and boost their revenue in the future.

Alipay is still the biggest 3rd party player, accounting for 48% market share, followed by China UnionPay with 20% market share.

Based on the recent half-year performance of hedge funds, it appears that the average performance of all types of hedge funds outperformed the market return significantly with macro-economic hedge funds ranked first in returns from November of 2012 to the end of April of 2013.

According to the annual reports released by city commercial banks, a lot of city commercial banks’ net profit growth rates in 2012 have shown a slowing down trend compared to 2011. For example, in 2011, both net profit growth rates of Hankou Bank and Bank of Chengdu were close to 50%, however, both of them shown a dramatic decrease as the end of 2012. Also, the net profit growth of the two listed city commercial banks - Bank of Nanjing and Bank of Ningbo, are showing a significant decline in 2012.

Lower net profit is putting a lot of pressure to Chinese commercial banks in 2013, and the figures implies that city commercial banks have to seek for new business and products to reboot high profit in 2013.

The latest Chinese manufacturing PMI is 50.6, declining by 0.3 point from March. From May 2012 to April 2013, this PMI figure has hovered the important line of 50 which is the watershed between economic growth and shrinkage. It signals that the growth of Chinese manufacturing economy is still fluctuating, largely because of the transformation and reformation of Chinese manufacturing industries during this period. The trend is expected to continue in the future so we will likely see continued fluctuations.