Background
Before 1993 the four main state banks had not publicly acknowledged the concept and had never provided against a bad debt. During 1999, the Peoples' Bank of China ("PBOC") established four main asset management companies ("AMCs") in order to deal with the severity of the four state bank's accumulated level of NPLs, estimated by some at the time as equating up to 70% of total loans on average. The four AMCs and source banks are outlined in the table below:
