Foreign Banks Hit a Wall in China

Walt Disney didn’t have trouble raising money for its $4.4  billion theme park in Shanghai. After it won approval in 2009, a dozen Chinese banks sprang into action, offering $2 billion in loans and promising more. Foreign lenders, limited by the Chinese government in how much they can lend, watched from the sidelines. The size of the deal put it beyond their reach.

Five years after China said it fully met World Trade Organization obligations to open its economy to global financial firms, Citigroup and HSBC Holdings are among banks still largely shut out of the world’s third-biggest banking market. Foreign financial companies hold less than 2 percent of assets in China, the lowest share among major emerging markets, according to the International Monetary Fund.