Similarly, for the NPLs already accumulated by the commercial banks, a market to trade NPLs needs to be established to facilitate disposal of NPLs according to the market rules. After the Asian financial crisis, four asset management companies were set up in China in 1999 to dispose of the NPLs removed from the books of four state-owned commercial banks.
Foreign investors and domestic institutional investors have been encouraged to get involved in disposing of NPLs. With these developments, the NPLs transfer market is forming and developing. The existence and maturity of such a market is crucial for the banking sector to solve the historical NPL problem. BIS Review 46/2004  3  5.