OREANDA-NEWS.  February 22, 2012. Since the acquisition of pilot qualifications on foreign invested equity investment fund, Chongqing has been valued highly by Administration of Exchange Control and attracted much attention from a lot of overseas funds. The reporter from the Financial Work Forum was informed that Chongqing became the No. 1 city in China in foreign funds involvement last year.  

Last October, Chongqing Financial Office held the national policy of cross-border RMB foreign direct investment (FDI) tightly in time and took the lead in formulating Foreign Funds Management Measures and Operation Process for Cross Border RMB in the whole country. In two months, it had brought in the first cross-border RMB private equity fund, and won five well-known funds at home and abroad such as the CID Group, and the total subscription had reached to USD 600 million.

Meanwhile, Chongqing financial institutions played creatively in the application of FDI policies for micro-credit companies and pioneered in the establishment of wholly-foreign-funded and joint venture micro-credit companies. "There are 13 newly-founded ones and 2 others have increased their investment; the total introduced foreign investment is up to USD 614 million; and micro-credit companies have become an important channel in the invitation of foreign investment," according to Ren Luoguang, Director of Chongqing Financial Office. "

In the next two years, Chongqing will introduce Pacific Alliance to establish Assets Management Company which will be specialized in the nationwide acquisition of micro-credit companies' assets. And in order to push Chongqing becoming the financing centre of nationwide micro-credit companies, the assignment of such acquisition will be performed in Chongqing
"In order to make Chongqing as a core financial highland in the mainland, innovation on financial openness must be done and the introduction of foreign financial institutions is critical," Ren Luoguang said.  Last year in Chongqing, ANZ Bank and Deutsche Bank were opened; Development Bank of Singapore received Financial License; and three kinds of new-type rural financial institutions encouraged by CBRC (China Banking Regulatory Commission) were settled down.

The reporter has leaned that as Chongqing doing innovation and introduction of foreign financial institutions, it has constantly strengthened the exchanges and cooperation with stock exchanges in Hong Kong, Singapore, and New York and so on, and has played actively in the promotion of enterprises' overseas listing. Blackgold International Holdings Limited has been listed in Australia; Xiexin Group has finished PRE—IPO financing and has held a hearing at Hong Kong exchange and thus has met the conditions for listing. By far, there are 14 enterprises listed overseas in Chongqing, occupying about 27%.