SSE welcomes quality overseas companies to issue CDRs

File photo shows an exterior view of the Shanghai Stock Exchange at Pudong New Area in Shanghai, east China. (Xinhua)

Shanghai Stock Exchange (SSE), one of the main bourses in China, will strengthen cooperation with global securities exchanges to attract quality listed companies to issue Chinese depository receipts (CDRs) on SSE, said Qiu Yong, chairman of the SSE recently.

Qiu made the remarks on the Global Investors Conference 2022 held by SSE in Shanghai on November 9, saying that SSE will also enhance and expand the Shanghai-Hong Kong Stock Connect scheme and explore and innovate the ETF connect program to further optimize the inter-connectivity mechanisms.

SSE aimed at propelling in a steady pace the institutional opening-up of China's capital market, vowing to improve cross-border investment and financing system and enrich the product system of SSE to increase convenience for overseas issuers and investors to participate in SSE's stock and bond markets.

In recent years, Shanghai-Hong Kong Stock Connect has become an important channel for overseas investors to invest in the A-share market. Apart from the inter-connectivity scheme within China, global depository receipts (GDR) issuance is available to SSE-listed companies on more international exchanges which expanded to those in Germany and Switzerland this year.

By continuously optimizing the issuance rules of panda bonds and actively serving the Belt and Road construction, overseas issuers have issued Belt and Road bonds and panda bonds in excess of 100 billion yuan on SSE.

In June this year, SSE released together with China Securities Depository and Clearing Co., Ltd. business rules to support overseas institutional investors to directly open securities account to take part in bond investment on SSE.

At present, many overseas institutions have participated in related bond trading on SSE, which further broadened the channels for overseas capital to invest in China.

Moreover, the portfolio investment tools linking SSE with overseas and foreign markets got more and more diversified. 

To date, such cross-market ETF products numbered 47 ones, with total value exceeding 120 billion yuan and granting investors accesses to markets in China's Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and other countries such as the United States, Germany, France and Japan.