Second, "mezzanine funds" first appeared in the motions of the two sessions, which should be a positive signal-the financing needs of enterprises are increasingly diversified, and mezzanine funds are promising. Our reporter found that mezzanine funds are still in the initial stage in China, but with more and more mergers and acquisitions, the market demand for mezzanine funds will grow. However, there is still a long way to go to prosperity.
During the two sessions, Yang Chao, the former chairman of China Life Insurance (25.20, -0.38,-1.49%), clearly suggested that "the scope and categories of indirect investment in equity funds by insurance institutions should be expanded, such as mezzanine funds and fof, which are more suitable for the characteristics of insurance funds at present."
Mezzanine investment is a common investment form in the capital market of developed countries, which mainly refers to an investment form between priority creditor's rights and equity financing in terms of investment risk and income. It is a mature asset allocation category in European and American markets. In 2005, the first mezzanine financing fund appeared in China, which aroused widespread concern in the market. In mid-July last year, the local institution CITIC Industrial Investment Fund disclosed that it planned to raise a CITIC mezzanine fund focusing on M&A financing, corporate equity pledge financing, mineral energy and real estate, with a target scale of 5 billion yuan, not exceeding 6 billion yuan.
This year, according to the reporter's understanding, many small and medium-sized PE institutions have also begun to try to enter the mezzanine capital field, among which Huinong Capital is a typical institution.
According to Wei Lidong, president of Huinong Capital, Huinong Capital currently manages three funds with a total amount of 3 billion yuan. There are two types of business, one is two-phase equity investment funds, each with 500 million yuan, and the other is mezzanine funds.
Huinong Capital, established only three years ago, is a "new recruit" in the PE industry, but it has tried the most "cutting-edge" business. Regarding the reasons for the allocation of funds, Wei Lidong said, "It is very obvious and inevitable to enter mezzanine capital."
According to him, this stems from the practical problems encountered in the process of investing in a company in Northeast China. After the capital investment of benefiting farmers is completed, the enterprise has a new capital demand in the process of restructuring, and it needs to lift the original mortgage before asset division.
"In order to solve this problem, we provided mezzanine capital for enterprises, made matching loans, issued more than 2 billion corporate bonds at the same time, and paid off corporate loans in full, which made us realize that commercial banks are not only engaged in pure loan business, but also advanced in equity investment and debt restructuring. That's it. We issued mezzanine funds, only 2.2 billion last year, mainly based on corporate mergers and acquisitions, and also combined with the status quo to do some real estate financing. " Wei Lidong further explained.
However, some institutions trying to "frustrate" mezzanine funds told reporters that it is not easy to cooperate with banks.
In this regard, a person in charge of a syndicated loan in one of the four major banks told reporters that mezzanine financing cases will be done occasionally, and the quality of specific projects must be seen. In addition, priority will be given to projects applied by PE institutions with long-term cooperation-this will reduce the difficulty of due diligence to some extent. He believes that mezzanine funds still have a long way to go before they can prevail in China.
Yang Hui, chairman of Huamin Chuangfu, also believes that the introduction of structured products is necessary for financial innovation in terms of the current domestic financial environment, but not any PE investment institution can easily try it. It is important to look at specific projects. Different from equity investment, mezzanine investment pays more attention to the solvency of enterprises, including their current and future cash flows. Enterprises should have good past performance, stable management team and leading market position.
In view of the existing mezzanine investment environment in China, Liu Biwei, an analyst at Zero2IPO Research Center, believes that the bottleneck of mezzanine fund development mainly lies in the source of investors and the choice of exit mode created by relevant policies.
Liu Biwei pointed out that from the perspective of investors of mezzanine funds, mezzanine funds take asset preservation as the primary consideration and bring investors a stable return on investment through regular income and asset appreciation. According to foreign mature experience, mezzanine investment is very attractive to institutional investors with high investment security requirements, such as insurance companies, commercial banks and fof. At present, there are not enough institutional investors in China.
In addition, in the choice of investment tools, if the mezzanine fund is US dollars, due to the current domestic and foreign investment and foreign exchange policy restrictions, you can choose to inject funds into the overseas holding entity of the target enterprise, and the investment tools are relatively flexible, including convertible bonds and preferred shares; If mezzanine funds are RMB funds, due to legal obstacles, the choice of general investment tools is relatively narrow. Investors can only enter the target enterprise in the form of common stock, and get interest similar to creditor's rights in the form of dividends from common stock through investment terms, or choose to cooperate with trust companies to invest in inferior trust structured products, and the priority will be raised by the trust, thus achieving the effect of leveraged financing.
Correspondingly, the two types of funds also show different exit paths. If investors choose to inject capital into the domestic business entity of the target enterprise with RMB funds, the optional investment tools are single and the exit channels are relatively narrow; However, investing in overseas entities of the target enterprise with US dollar funds has various tools and smooth paths.