Shanghai-listed Anxin Trust Co. Ltd. was once lauded as China's most profitable trust company. That was before a 50 billion yuan ($7 billion) financial black hole appeared in its books, along with mounting defaults and opaque operations that have regulators seeing it as a troublemaker.
The dramatic reversal took place over less than two years, but the risks have been quietly brewing for much longer. The collapse of Anxin brought to light a dark corner of China's 20 trillion yuan ($2.8 trillion) trust industry where billions of dollars of investments were misappropriated to benefit the biggest shareholders and their affiliates.
