Would you buy Mystery Bank A? It reports solid net interest margins of about 3 per cent. Costs are less than a third of income. It is also super-liquid, with loans equivalent to 61 per cent of deposits. (Non-performing loans, by the way, are just 1 per cent of the total.) Assets and returns on equity are each growing at more than 20 per cent a year. And here’s the real kicker: it has never been cheaper, at just over 7 times this year’s earnings.

That investors are not snapping up Industrial & Commercial Bank of China, therefore, is worrying. ICBC remains the world’s biggest bank by market value, worth US$222bn, about as much as HSBC and Citigroup combined. And yet it, along with much of the rest of the listed Chinese banking sector, is trading about 10 per cent adrift of its previous record-low valuation in the post-Lehman nadir. The Hang Seng’s multiple has improved by 23 per cent over that period.

Perhaps the best explanation is that the market fears a round of hugely dilutive capital injections, as loans made in China’s post-crisis lending spree turn bad. ICBC, after all, seemed to test the water last year, when it spent several months carrying out a Hong Kong rights issue that raised about a fifth less than the bank had just paid out in dividends. The longer the state-directed flow of loans goes on, the more that exercise looks like a dummy-run.