CSRC has launched a cross-border ETF scheme to connect the Chinese and Japanese stock markets, according to an announcement by the regulator on Friday.
These eastbound ETFs will be established onshore by Chinese asset management firms and trade on the Shanghai Stock Exchange.
They will launch under the Qualified Domestic Institutional Investor (QDII) scheme and must invest no less than 90% of assets in Japanese ETFs that track the Nikkei 225 Index or Topix Stock Price Index.
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SSE has set up a scheme to allow qualified institutional investors to trade distressed debts, according to a notice from the exchange on Friday.
“Due to a few recent defaults and risk incidents, the existing trading arrangements are no longer sufficient to satisfy the needs of market participants,” the statement read.
Qualified bonds include those bonds that have themselves defaulted, and those issued by borrowers that have defaulted before.
Only institutional investors registered with the SSE, that have a high risk appetite and have experience in handling high-risk bonds can participate in the scheme.
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Traders shorting the renminbi will face “huge losses”, according to Guo Shuqing, head of the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission (CBIRC). Xiao Yuanqi, a CBIRC spokesperson, made the comment on behalf of Guo at a finance forum in Beijing on Saturday.
He added that the regulator is not expecting persistent declines in renminbi.
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A total volume of Rmb18.99tr ($2.76tr) traded on the Chinese foreign exchange market in April, according to a statement by the State Administration of Foreign Exchange on Friday.
Trading between banks and their clients reached Rmb2.22tr, while trading between banks hit Rmb16.77tr.
There was a total of Rmb6.63tr traded on the FX spot market, and Rmb12.36tr on the derivatives market.
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China will encourage enterprises to increase research investments, said Wang Zhijun, vice minister of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, in a Politburo meeting on Friday.
The government will also launch favourable tax policies that allow enterprises to deduct expenses related to research and development, state media Xinhua reported on the same day.
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Harvest Fund Management and Bloomberg announced that they would together develop fixed income funds that track the Bloomberg Barclays Indices, making Harvest the first onshore asset management company to do so.
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Profits earned by China’s industrial companies — those with an annual revenue of more than Rmb20m — shrank in April after a sharp rebound in the previous month, according to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Monday morning.
Industrial profits in April dropped 3.7% year on year to Rmb515.4bn, a sharp downturn from the 13.9% upward surge in March.
For the first four months of this year, industrial profits dropped 3.4% on an annual basis to Rmb1.81tr.