CHINA

By Jern-Fei Ng, Stephen Peng, Lan Li, Hussein Haeri and Christina Liew   What is investment treaty protection?   Modern investment treaties as we know them have been around for approximately 60 years. In addition to providing qualifying international investors with substantive protections against unfair treatment, discrimination, and asset expropriation by the host State into which they have invested, one of the key benefits of investment treaties is that they allow investors – companies and even natural persons – to bring arbitration claims directly against States for wrongful treatment of their investments.   This innovation in the world of international dispute resolution originated in the early...

FOREIGN DIRECT INVESTMENT NEWS 2021

By Wen Sheng   Bolstered by the excessive liquidity in the market to support pandemic-stricken economies and enterprises, major stock markets, from New York and Tokyo to Hong Kong and Shanghai, have boomed in recent months. This once again proves that liquidity is king for the capital market.    The CSI300 index, tracking the 300 biggest traded companies in China's two bourses in Shanghai and Shenzhen, surpassed its 2015 peak in January 2021, after jumping an impressive 28 percent last year. A growing number of investors, from within China and abroad, are pinning high hopes on a continuous significant rally...

FOREIGN DIRECT INVESTMENT OUTBOUND INVESTMENT HIGHLIGHTS 2021

By Zhang Shiwei   As a free trade port with Chinese characteristics, the relevant system design of the Hainan free trade port cannot copy the offshore company law and offshore financial system of the traditional offshore jurisdiction. We may as well start from the local offshore and become the registered place of red chip offshore companies, so as to give full play to the location advantages relative to the traditional offshore jurisdiction, so as to play an important role in the overseas red chip private placement, listing and cross-border M & A of Chinese enterprises.   Recently, the Hainan Free...

FUNDS & FUNDS SERVICES NEWS 2021

By EY Greater China   The fifth session of the 13th National People’s Congress Standing Committee passed the revisions to the China Individual Income Tax (IIT) Law on 31 August 2018. The effective date of the New IIT Law is 1 January 2019.    We will discuss the issues which may have impacts on Chinese nationals who have overseas income and their Chinese employers in the following.    The new China Individual Income Tax (IIT) Law implies more strict registration requirements. Chinese employer needs to register outbound employees’ information before the end of February of the following year. It also means increased employer obligations as...

CORPORATE & FIDUCIARY NEWS 2021

By Loletta Chow   The Belt and Road Initiative will deepen international cooperation and advance economic growth in countries along the route.   Today, China's overseas industrial parks have become an important medium to promote B&R development and international capacity cooperation. The overseas industrial parks effectively encourage China's advantageous industries to “go abroad”. For host countries, these industrial parks have attracted more Chinese enterprises to invest and build factories in their countries, which will not only drive employment and tax revenues, expand exports and foreign exchange, but also strongly promote their industrialization and upgrade of industries.   The overseas industrial parks...

FOREIGN DIRECT INVESTMENT OUTBOUND INVESTMENT HIGHLIGHTS 2021

With assistance by Charlie Zhu, Evelyn Yu, Mengchen Lu, and Dingmin Zhang   One of China’s largest asset managers is targeting to almost double the foreign cash it oversees as the nation’s economic rise and financial opening increase demand.   China Asset Management Co. will seek to grow such assets to at least $10 billion over the next few years, up from about $6 billion, Richard Pan, head of Global Capital Investment at the Beijing-based firm, said in an interview. Its assets under the Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor plan -- a program that allows foreigners to invest in China -- have...

FUNDS & FUNDS SERVICES NEWS 2020

By Thomas Hale   Beijing says the country is a ‘safe harbor’ after its rapid recovery from the pandemic   Ivanhoé Cambridge, a group that invests in international property on behalf of the Quebec state pension system, had already put $2bn into China’s logistics sector over the past few years. In June, as coronavirus was raging across the world, it decided to add another $400m to the total. “We’ve certainly been trying to increase our exposure to logistics in China as quickly and as responsibly as we can,” said George Agethen, senior vice-president, Asia Pacific, at the Canadian company, who points...

FOREIGN DIRECT INVESTMENT OUTBOUND INVESTMENT HIGHLIGHTS 2020

By Zhang Shidong   China’s yuan-denominated assets will get a fresh catalyst this month from some policy measures to give foreign stock and bond managers' wider access to the capital markets. That also means exposure to the second-best Asian currency in the past 12 months.   The central bank and market regulators have streamlined approval procedures for its inbound investment schemes, known by their QFII and RQFII acronyms, from November 1. They will also let foreign investors access a wider array of assets such as over-the-counter stocks, financial and commodity futures, and hedge funds, among others.   First announced in September, authorities will...

CORPORATE & FIDUCIARY NEWS 2020