New market for the Shanghai Stock Exchange: In January, the Shanghai Stock Exchange launched the Sci-Tech innovation board (“STAR Market”). The STAR Market focuses on supporting enterprises in new and innovative industries, and allows businesses that are unprofitable, or with weighted voting rights structures, to go public. A widened price fluctuation range of 20% operates, with no limits on price fluctuation for the first five trading days. On 22 July 2019, trading commenced on this market, on which UBS was the first foreign underwriter to complete an offering.

More foreign participation in mainland China's bond market: In September, the rules on foreign institutional investors trading on the interbank bond market were relaxed, allowing the transfer of bond investments and cash balances between an investor’s accounts opened under the qualified foreign institutional investor (“QFII”) scheme and its RMB counterpart scheme as well as those directly opened in the interbank bond market. The record-filing procedures in the different markets were also streamlined.

(R)QFII investors no longer subject to SAFE-determined quotas: In September, the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (“SAFE”) announced that it would be revising the relevant regulations of the QFII programme to remove individually assigned quotas and total overall caps on institutional investors. Similar restrictions under the Renminbi QFII programme will be removed at the same time.

Shanghai-London Stock Connect: June saw the official launch of the Stock Connect scheme between the Shanghai and London stock exchanges, which allows eligible companies listed on both exchanges to issue depositary receipts in each other’s market. A-share listed Huatai Securities is the first issuer to list global depositary receipts (GDRs) under the scheme, raising US$1.69bn in what was London’s largest GDR offering since 2012.