China's trusts surge to record high

SHANGHAI - Chinese trust companies had a record 8.73 trillion yuan ($1.42 trillion) worth of assets by the end of March, up 64.7 percent from a year earlier, the China Trustee Association (CTA) has reported.

The companies saw profits surge 43.4 percent year on year raking in more than 11 billion yuan in gains during the first three months of 2013.

About a quarter of the trust funds were invested in industrial and commercial enterprises, while another quarter was used for financing infrastructure projects.

By the end of March, trust funds worth 654.8 billion yuan had been used to finance projects rolled out by local governments, which was 1.6 times bigger than the volume in the same period last year, CTA data showed.

Real estate businesses received 82 billion yuan from trust companies in the first quarter.