Global banks grapple with China joint ventures

Offshore lenders weigh raising stakes in local securities houses despite tight margins

In 2006, as Beijing was getting ready to host the Olympic Games two years later, Wang Qishan, the city’s mayor, encountered a problem from an unlikely quarter: a state-run but struggling securities house called Beijing Securities.

Wang, who was later to become China’s anti-corruption tsar, wanted to avert the danger of an embarrassing run on a state-owned firm during or in the lead-up to the event and called in UBS to bail out the firm, which the Swiss bank duly did.

“Wang didn’t want to end