The high population and savings rates and the opening of its markets this year made China the focus for many delegates. Tricia Bowden, managing director and senior counsel at Goldman Sachs in Tokyo, said, "The pace of regulatory change and development in China is breath-taking." She said ISDA has been in dialogue with the regulators and is hopeful the first cross-currency swap is not far away.
Ralph Liu, chairman of Advanced e-Financial Technologies in Corona, Calif., walked participants through the first domestic RMB interest-rate swap in the market which he structured earlier this year between China Everbright Bank and China Development Bank. He further spelled out arbitrage opportunities for local participants between banking rates controlled by the central bank and rates from a trading book that are determined by something close to a market mechanism, noting this should spur growth for a domestic interest-rates market.
Participants noted an explosive boom in trades won't happen overnight but international firms are now positioning themselves for further market liberalization and have for instance been buying stakes in local banks. "It's a multi-year project," said Jonathan Moulds, head of international markets at Bank of America in London and ISDA chairman.
Speakers said attention on the nation is not over-blown: Michael Rees, ceo of wholesale banking at Standard Chartered Bank in the Lion City, noted 150 years ago China and India were the major global economies while the emerging markets for instance included the U.S. "It's more appropriate to talk about their re-emergence," he said.
