Continuing its steady move toward building up its presence in Asia and the Far East, and China in particular, Copenhagen based Retail FX broker Saxo Bank has announced that it has added access to China A-shares to its global multi-asset offering.
Saxo Bank clients are able to trade A-shares listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges. Access will be enabled via the Hong Kong Stock Connect link, a collaboration between the Hong Kong, Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges, which allows international and Mainland Chinese investors to trade securities in each other’s markets.
The offering will be available in all Saxo Bank’s markets besides from UK and Japan, which will be rolled out at a later stage.
Saxo Bank is in the process of having majority control of the company sold to China’s Geely Group, awaiting final regulatory approvals. Since the deal was first announced in October 2017 Saxo has seen an increase in senior management turnover, has sold non-core businesses including Privatbank and its South Africa subsidiary, and has beefed up its presence in China via a partnership with SINA Corp’s Valuable Capital, and hiring Commonwealth Bank’s Vivienne Yu as CEO of Greater China.
Saxo Bank is adding the shares at a particularly interesting time with Chinese A-shares recently added to the MSCI Emerging Markets index and regulators have recently quadrupled the daily quota available for trading through the Stock Connect program.
Kim Fournais, Saxo Bank
Commenting on the launch, Kim Fournais, CEO and founder of Saxo Bank said:
The addition of China A-shares strengthens our multi-asset offering for traders and investors and gives our clients access to some very interesting investment opportunities. The launch is a major milestone in building the product range which will make Saxo Bank a leading a “gateway” to investments in Chinese markets.
China is the greatest growth story of our century and the appetite among investors to access this growth through capital markets is significant. Investors have been somewhat underweight in their exposure to Chinese stocks and coupled with the recent addition of Chinese A-shares to the MSCI emerging market index, interest in these shares is increasing.