China

HNA Group, the owner of Hainan Airlines, priced the group’s third bond in three weeks on Thursday. The deal follows Hong Kong Airlines and Hainan Airlines which issued dim sum and Singapore dollars respectively.

Standard Chartered (StanChart) has set up a pan-China RMB cross-border sweeping scheme for a number of its clients, taking advantage of the latest round of reforms announced by the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) that expanded on liberalisations first tested in the Shanghai pilot free trade zone (FTZ).

China's State Administration of Foreign Exchange (Safe) added Rmb11.1bn ($1.8bn) to its RMB qualified foreign institutional investors (RQFII) programme in October. In Europe, Investec, BNP Paribas Investment Partners (BNPP IP) and the Carmignac Group took home individual RQFII quotas to start investing in China’s capital markets.

In this round-up: the Chinese Ministry of Finance flags its next auction of RMB bonds in Hong Kong; RMB trade settlement in Hong Kong was up sharply in the first nine months of this year, while monthly RMB clearing and quarterly China RMB trade settlement fell; October was another record month for RMB trading volumes on the Moscow Exchange.

China Construction Bank (CCB) priced what was only the second ever tier two bank capital transaction to be issued in offshore renminbi (CNH) this week. The November 5 trade proved to be a hit with investors, even though they had trouble finding comparables for it.

The planned offshore renminbi clearing house in Paris will mark the first step towards the establishment of a broad offshore RMB ecosystem independent of central banks and reminiscent of the Eurodollar market, according to Peng Wei, deputy general manager of Bank of China Paris branch (BoC Paris), the firm that is at the heart of preparations for the launch of the system next year.

ANZ has moved to strengthen its China franchise by appointing a senior banker from Bank of America Merrill Lynch as its new CEO of China and head of Greater China. Huang Xiaoguang joins in January 2015 and will report to Farhan Faruqui, CEO of international banking.

The addition this week of South Korea's Won to the list of direct trading currency pairs with China's renminbi (CNY) throws up challenges not seen so far in similar arrangements with other currencies. Unlike sterling, euros and Singapore dollars, the Won is itself not fully convertible, meaning that direct quotes between the two currencies in China's onshore market will not be possible.

Bond investors have plenty of choices of which Chinese bank to put their money into after China Construction Bank (CCB) joined two of its peers in opening books on November 5.

The delayed Shanghai-Hong Kong Stock Connect programme, when it finally launches, will be a milestone development for the Chinese A share market and will offer new opportunities to yield-starved investors from Europe and Japan, says French asset manager Amundi.

Surprise, surprise. The launch of the Shanghai-Hong Kong Stock Connect scheme, which had been in the works for months, has recently been delayed. The Through Train has been derailed.

The sixth offshore RMB clearing bank appointment of the year was unveiled on Tuesday, when the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) announced that it had picked Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) Doha Branch as the renminbi clearing bank for Qatar. The move is the first such appointment in the Middle East and follows similar announcements this year in London, Frankfurt, Seoul, Paris and Luxembourg.