Chinese banks have been ordered to account for about Rmb2,300bn ($339bn) in off- balance sheet loans in a move that could put some lenders under serious stress and require another large round of capital-raising.

China's banking regulator has told lenders they must put all loans sold or transferred to lightly regulated Chinese trust companies back on their books and stop using “informal securitisation” to evade regulatory requirements. “We've learnt the lesson of the financial crisis and we realise we need to strengthen oversight over this phenomenon,” a senior regulator told the Financial Times.

The repackaging of loans into securitised products has been blamed for exacerbating the recent global financial crisis in the west but such complex instruments had been little used in China.