U.S., European Investment Banks May Have Lost Some $12 Billion As Chinese Education Firms Crashed – Forbes

The recent government crackdown on China’s after-school education sector is not only wiping out ten-figure fortunes of some ultra-wealthy founders — it’s also costing some of the world’s largest investment banks and money management firms billions of dollars.

Starting on Friday and continuing on Monday, shares of Gaotu Techedu, New Oriental Education & Tech Group and Tal Education — a trio of NYSE listed Chinese tutoring firms — crashed. On Friday, a report that the government was going to crack down on the for-profit education firms sent shares careening — Gaotu Techedu shares plummeted 98%. Then over the weekend, the Chinese government announced sweeping reforms to the sector, mandating that the firms become non-profits and that they no longer raise money from foreign investors. 

Shares of Gaotu, New Oriental and Tal Education dropped 29%, 34% and 27% respectively on Monday, and the companies have lost 75%, 67% and 76% of their market value over the past week. Among those hit the most are American investment banks like Goldman Sachs, which as of the most recent SEC filings in February, owns nearly 19% of Gaotu, and Morgan Stanley, which owns a 6% stake in Gaotu and 14% stake in Tal.  

Because foreign companies listed in the U.S. only have to reveal their shareholders once a year, it’s possible that these investment banks have changed their stakes since the Chinese firms filed their 2020 reports to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Of the six major non-Chinese institutional shareholders of Gaotu and Tal, Scottish money manager Baillie Gifford declined to comment, while Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, UBS, Credit Suisse and Nomura did not immediately return a request for comment.    

After-school tutoring was once a high-flying industry in China, spurred on by the growing demand for its virtual offerings during the Covid pandemic—and intense competition among millions of the country’s students to gain entrance into China’s top universities. Between March 2020 and March 2021, shares of Gaotu rose 155% to a market cap of roughly $30 billion, while New Oriental and Tal’s shares were up 39% and 38% respectively. 

Now China is reforming the industry in an attempt to address the cost of child rearing and ameliorate excessive pressure on its students. But the underlying issue — fierce competition for spots at elite universities — remains. According to the country’s Ministry of Education, a record 10.78 million students were expected to take the national college entrance exam in 2021. However, only six Chinese universities made it to the top 100 of the Times Higher Education’s world university rankings.

A spot at one of these top institutions — Tsinghua University, Peking University, Fudan University, University of Science and Technology, Zhejiang University and Shanghai Jiao Tong University — is highly coveted, but the six universities have a combined undergraduate population of less than 100,000 students. China’s large student population and highly competitive education landscape drove the initial rise of the private education industry, but its investors now face a murky future.

Shares of the Chinese tutoring companies have been declining since early 2021. Gaotu’s second biggest shareholder, Goldman Sachs, which owns about a 19% stake per the February SEC filing. At its peak last October, Gaotu traded at nearly $115 per share, valuing Goldman’s stake at over $3.6 billion. Based on its Monday closing price of $2.50, the same Gaotu stake is now worth less than $80 million. 

Other investors also suffered heavy losses. Japanese financial services group Nomura, which owns a 6% stake in Gaotu, has seen the value of its shares drop $1.2 billion from its peak, while Swiss investment bank Credit-Suisse, which owns 5% of Gaotu, has seen the value of its investments decline by $970 million since its high. (It’s possible that all of these banks trimmed their shareholdings after the February filing with the SEC.)

Morgan Stanley, with major stakes in two Chinese education firms, is possibly the biggest loser outside of the Middle Kingdom. Its 6% stake of Gaotu was worth more than $1.1 billion at its peak, while its 14% stake in Tal Education was once worth nearly $2.7 billion. Those two stakes have lost $3.7 billion of their value collectively based on Monday’s closing prices. Morgan Stanley’s stake in Tal was as of March 31. 

Other big losers include another Swiss investment bank UBS Group, whose UBS Asset Management owned 9% of Tal. Those shares have lost $1.6 billion of their value since Tal shares topped $90 per share this past February; the firm is now trading at $4.40. Scottish investment manager Baillie Gifford, which owns 6% of Tal, has seen the value of its investment drop nearly $1.2 billion over the course of the stock crash. New Oriental Education, whose stock hopped over $19.50 per share in February, is now trading at $1.94, though it no longer has any major foreign investors. New York investment firm Davis Advisors used to own a 6% stake in the Chinese company, but it fell below the 5% ownership reporting threshold on New Oriental’s 2020 annual report.

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