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主题:风险在累积 -- 清风席卷

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This is a common practice in United States for many years. The earliest example dated back to 1950s. Large equipment makers use this approach to squeeze small players who might be of low-cost, but can not compete on financing (their balance sheet is too weak to support such a long-term commitment).

Vendor financing allows the vendor to charge premium price, control one's customer and get constant cash flows. But the vendor MUST be very sophisticated IN FINANCE. The vendor must have a very strong balance sheet (low leverage ratio) so that it can easily borrow money from the corporate bond market or large banks. And banks do not dare to say "NO" to you because you are such an important client.

In United States, large equipment makers, such as Catepillar, lower financing risk by transferring all long-term receivables from their customers to a separate finance subsidiary. Finance subsidiary borrows money cheaply to finance those long-term A/R financing, therefore, the manufacturing side is not exposed to the finance risk. GM Finance is another example.

Another option is to invite investment bank to put up special legal structure (SPE) so that long-term receivables can be sold to SPE and get financed through medium-term commercial papers issued to pension funds, money market funds...

Last option is to let the manufacturing firm to operate a retail bank too (Canadian Tire model) so that it can get cheap and stable deposit base to finance its long-term customer A/R ( of course, you must charge an implicit high interest income there to compensate for your deposit interest and branch costs).

The second option is very very common and cheap in US, but China does not have that infrastructure there.

First option separate the bankruptcy risk to a finance subsidiary, but the manufacturing firm MUST BE VERY SMART IN FINANCE. I do not expect that among Chinese manufacturers.

The last option can not be applied in China since it will bump into legal trouble too.

只要资金链不断--very Chinese term, 资金链 is that working capital or just financing cash flow? These two are totally different concepts in finance.

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