Eight Chinese Banks Redeem $25.5B Preferred Shares, Topping All of 2025

The scale here is the story: redemptions in the early part of 2026 already outpacing all of 2025 points to a structural shift in how Chinese banks manage their capital stack, not a one-off. Swapping preferred stock for perpetual bonds lowers funding costs, which matters for bank profitability and, indirectly, for the credit backdrop that RWA and yield-seeking crypto products increasingly track. The concentration of callable windows suggests more of this is queued up. Whether the pace of perpetual bond issuance keeps matching redemptions — and whether spreads stay tight enough to justify the trade — is the open question.