Hong Kong Property Concerns Deepen Among Bankers and Regulators

Hong Kong bankers and regulators are signaling growing concern over the city’s deepest real estate downturn since the Asian financial crisis.

In recent months, the de facto central bank here has intensified scrutiny of lenders’ decisions on distressed loans. It has called banks more frequently to gauge their willingness to extend credit lines to even smaller developers. And bankers are increasingly reassessing the lofty valuations assigned to collateral that backs hundreds of billions of dollars of property loans.