China’s central bank stepped up cash injections via open-market operations as a resumption of new share sales drove demand for funds.
The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) sold 50 billion yuan (US$7.8 billion) of seven-day reverse-repurchase agreements yesterday, more than the total of 30 billion yuan last week.
Twenty-eight initial public offerings, including 10 this week, will lock up 3.4 trillion yuan of funds, according to a Bloomberg survey.
Subscriptions that started on Monday drove the overnight money rate to its highest level in a month.
“This is a pre-emptive measure by the central bank to ensure liquidity is ample during the IPOs,” Shanghai-based China Merchants Bank Co (招商銀行) analyst Wan Zhao said. “The money market tightened slightly yesterday and the PBOC wants to maintain the stability.”
The one-day repurchase rate, a gauge of interbank funding availability, fell one basis point to 1.77 percent as of 4:42pm in Shanghai, according to National Interbank Funding Center prices.
The overnight repo rate traded on the Shanghai Stock Exchange jumped 186 basis points, the most since Nov. 6, to 2.39 percent.
The real challenge comes today, when institutions need to borrow a lot of money to deposit funds and then the liquidity crunch will ease on Friday, Shanghai-based CFETS-ICAP International Money Broking Co analyst Frank Sun wrote in a note on Monday.
The yield on government bonds due on October 2025 rose one basis point to 3.06 percent, according to National Interbank Funding Center data.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
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