Hong Kong SAR

Hengtou Securities has covered books for its HK$1.69bn ($218.07m) IPO in Hong Kong, with the leads looking to close and price the trade slightly earlier than scheduled.

The renminbi became the fourth most used currency for payments in August, overtaking the yen with a share of 2.79% of global payments, beating the Japanese currency by a small margin of 0.03%, Swift said in an October 6 report.

Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing has backed down from an earlier proposal to allow weighted voting rights (WVRs) for companies seeking a listing on the bourse, bowing to pressure from the city’s securities regulator.

Datang Environment Industry Group Co, a unit of state-owned China Datang Group, is seeking to list in Hong Kong, tapping Citic CLSA Securities and Morgan Stanley as joint sponsors.

China Reinsurance Corp and China Huarong Asset Management have kicked off the investor education phase of their respective Hong Kong IPOs, with both targeting multi-billion dollar offerings.

Luxembourg’s local fund industry association published a guide for institutions who want to join the RMB qualified foreign institutional investor (RQFII). It comes after the country was awarded a quota of Rmb50bn in April 2015.

Latham & Watkins has hired senior capital markets lawyer Yilong Du as a partner in its corporate department, tapping his experience in the China market to bolster its platform in Hong Kong and mainland China.

Bank of Zhengzhou, one of China’s biggest commercial lenders, has filed an application to list on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKEx) via joint sponsors Bocom International and Citic CLSA Securities.

In this round-up, Hong Kong and Taiwan RMB deposits shrink slightly while RMB cross-border trade settlement surges to new records in both Hong Kong and China, the RQFII programme reaches Rmb410bn ($80bn), Georgia and Kyrgyzstan work on establishing RMB swap lines with China, and Nanning authorities plan a new China-ASEAN currency index.

IMAX China has priced its Hong Kong IPO near the bottom of the range to raise HK$1.92bn ($247.74m), after initially guiding investors towards the middle.

JP Morgan has made two senior hires to its China investment banking business, this time poaching from Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Rothschild as it continues to build its franchise in the country.

China Reinsurance is slated to start gauging demand for its $2bn Hong Kong IPO on October 5, with books set to open a week later, according to a banker working on the transaction.