Tycoon running a quarter of China’s copper trade is on the ropes

From a start guarding trains full of metal from thieves on freezing winter nights, He Jinbi built a copper trading house so powerful that it handles one of every four tons imported into China.

He said the problems are temporary and affected only a small part of his business, but his trading counterparties and creditors are being cautious. Some Chinese domestic traders have suspended new deals, while one of the company’s longest-standing lenders, ICBC Standard Bank Plc, was concerned enough that it moved some copper out of China that had been backing its lending to Maike.

This account of He’s rise to the pinnacle of China’s commodities industry is based on interviews with business associates, rivals and bankers, many of whom asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the situation. As China’s economy liberalized, He used his connections to make Maike a middleman between big international traders and China’s burgeoning throng of copper consumers.

They were shocked to hear Barclays analyst Ingrid Sternby predict that copper would hit new highs as Chinese demand exceeded supply. But she was soon proved right, as prices more than doubled in the next 12 months. The SRB’s losses became a national scandal, and most Chinese traders missed the opportunity to cash in on the gains.

In Shanghai, he would regularly have lunch at a restaurant serving cuisine from Xi’an, where he’d eat his favorite steamed cold noodles and fried leek dumplings for 50 yuan .The evolution of He’s business mirrored the changes taking place in the Chinese business world. Although he had started simply as a distributor of physical copper, he soon pioneered the growing interconnections between the commodities business and financial markets in China.

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