Retail investors may have lost more than 9 billion yuan (1.27 billion U.S. dollars) from a structured crude oil product marketed by the Bank of China (BOC), financial news outlet Caixin reported on Sunday citing official sources.
More than 60,000 individual investors have lost deposits worth as much as 4.2 billion yuan, it said. A third of the total had invested more than 50,000 yuan each.
A dock worker, wearing a face mask to prevent the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), looks at an oil tanker unloading crude oil at a port in Qingdao, Shandong Province, China, March 26, 2020. /Reuters
The BOC's crude oil "Yuanyou Bao" is sold to individual customers and linked to domestic and foreign crude oil futures contracts, including Brent and West Texas Intermediate (WTI).
Read more: Bank of China: settlement price refers to the futures exchange
The BOC last week settled trade after WTI futures prices fell below zero U.S. dollars for the first time, ending at minus 37.63 U.S. dollars per barrel as traders paid to get rid of their oil.
The bank held between 24,000 and 25,000 long positions, with each position the equivalent of 1,000 barrels, leading to an estimated loss of 5.8 billion yuan, Caixin said.
The bank said last Friday (link in Chinese) that it was "deeply disturbed" by the losses incurred by its investors and blamed volatility in the global oil market brought about by the coronavirus pandemic. It said it would keep in communication with related institutions and investors to safeguard the interests of its customers.
(With input from Reuters)