China’s financial regulators have long been suspicious of many things, but particularly foreign institutions. Their job appeared to be to say ‘no’ to anyone who applied for, say, an investment banking licence.
Those days, it seems, are gone. Over the course of five working days in November, legislators got more done than most US presidents achieve in an entire term in office.
Let’s start in Beijing with the central bank, which injected Rmb200 billion ($30.5 billion) into the banking system.
Two miles away, multi-currency bean counters at the State Administration of Foreign Exchange extended an expansion of two trial programmes, aimed at boosting local ownership of global assets, to include Chongqing and the island of Hainan.
Bourse business
In other bourse-related business, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Shenzhen expanded the successful two-way Stock Connect scheme, while Shanghai and Shenzhen released rules that determine which firms can de-list from the main board, then re-list on the Star Market or Shenzhen’s growth-oriented ChiNext.
Not to be outdone, the CSRC, China’s securities regulator, kicked off an investigation into Yongcheng Coal and Electricity after it defaulted on an ultra short-term Rmb1 billion bond.
And Shenzhen wasn’t done.