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发帖数: 4859 | 1 By Jonathan Stearns and Helene Fouquet
Oct. 27 (Bloomberg) -- French President Nicolas Sarkozy
conferred with his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao as European
policy makers seek to build support for an enlarged rescue fund
designed to resolve the region’s sovereign-debt crisis.
Hu hopes that the measures will help to stabilize markets,
state-owned China Central Television reported. The phone call
between the leaders came hours after a euro-region summit ended
with an agreement to boost the European Financial Stability
Facility to about $1.4 trillion, leveraging existing guarantees
by as much as five times. Japan plans to support the increase,
and is waiting to hear from European officials on details for
the program, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Sarkozy’s outreach precedes a Group of 20 summit he will
host next week, with Europeans seeking to bolster the role of
the International Monetary Fund in overcoming the euro-region’s
woes. Australia’s finance chief said that while it’s
“appropriate” to look at the IMF’s resources, Europeans must
look to themselves first for bailout money.
“The Europeans have their back against the wall and China
is the lender of last resort,” Patrick Bennett, a strategist
at Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce in Hong Kong, said in a
Bloomberg Television interview before Sarkozy’s call.
The French president’s office said in a statement that
Sarkozy and Hu “agreed to cooperate closely to ensure the G20
can make a decisive contribution to ensure growth and global
stability.”
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao has signaled willingness to aid
the European Union as financial turmoil within the region
threatens to crush export demand in China’s biggest market. The
expansion of the rescue fund and a deal for bondholders to take
50 percent losses on Greek debt may help Sarkozy and German
Chancellor Angela Merkel to convince the world that Europe is
getting to grips with the crisis.
“China will need time to evaluate this plan very
carefully,” said Shen Jianguang, a Hong Kong-based economist
for Mizuho Securities Asia Ltd. “What worries China is that
there is so much disagreement among European policy makers. It
doesn’t want to be seen spending money on a plan that even
Europeans don’t want to support.”
Sarkozy and Hu’s conversation came a day before a planned
visit to Beijing by Klaus Regling, chief executive officer of
the EFSF, to court investors. China has the world’s largest
foreign-exchange reserves at more than $3.2 trillion. Regling is
also scheduled to visit Japan, Agence France-Presse reported,
citing a European Union official in Asia. |
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