China add overseas stocks to cross-border trading scheme, to enhance HK’s status as a financial hub

China’s government has widened a crucial transborder stock trading scheme in Hong Kong to strengthen its status as a global financial hub, in a crucial gesture that has won plaudits from banking and regulatory officials amid the city’s technical recession.

An expansion of the eight-year-old Stock Connect scheme will give mainland Chinese traders access to the shares of Hong Kong-listed overseas companies for the first time, according to the China Securities Regulatory Commission’s vice-chairman Fang Xinghai, at a financial forum in Beijing on Friday.

In addition, regulators in China and Hong Kong are studying a plan to create a special trading counter in Hong Kong for yuan-denominated stocks to facilitate the internationalisation of the Chinese currency, Fang said. Chinese Vice-Premier Han Zheng this week touted Hong Kong’s uniqueness as China’s offshore financial hub during a forum to promote the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

Read More at https://www.scmp.com/business/china-business/article/3191126/china-enhance-hong-kongs-status-global-financial-hub-adding