The emergence of “financial players” from China has distorted the soyabean trade in the world’s biggest importer of the oilseed, helping depress results at trading house Bunge, the company said.
The comment underlines the extent to which the rise of a Chinese shadow banking business that uses bulk material to back loans has upended commodities markets. The trading world has been transfixed over a scandal involving loans made against piles of metal in the dockside warehouses of Qingdao.
Agricultural market participants have also been affected. Bunge said China-based “financial players” had obtained financing at favourable rates to buy soyabeans because they were seen as “strategic commodities,” then cashed in the stocks and re-lent at higher rates to retail borrowers.