Executive Summary: Despite the gloomy predictions of foreign economists, the Chinese economy is not near collapse, but actually about to turn around. The presentation explores the current state of the economy, looking at metrics suggesting the Chinese economic down turn is worse than signaled by its GDP numbers, explains economic growth cycles and suggests key … Continued
Highlights: The European Commission has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Chinese National Development and Reform Commission and the Chinese State Administration of Industry and Commerce. These anti-trust authorities seek to increase cooperation and information exchange by facilitating greater technical cooperation regarding cartels, restrictive agreements and abuses of market dominance. In recent years, the … Continued
Highlights: Chinese firms too often announce deals and are then unable to follow through. According to a study (forthcoming) by Olga Hawn of Duke University, cross border deals involving Chinese companies are almost twice as likely to break down (15% of the time) as deals involving companies from other BRICS countries (8%) and three times … Continued
Highlights: The Ministry of Commerce of the PRC promulgated a new regulation allowing foreign investors to use equity held in a PRC company to invest in the capital of other PRC companies. Main Article: On September 21, 2012, the Ministry ofCommerce of the PRC (“MOFCOM”) released the Interim Measures for the Administration of Capital Contribution … Continued
Highlights: SAFE recently released a Circular easing foreign exchange control in the following major aspects: foreign exchange account opening and fund remittance, reinvestment by FIEs in China, investment by foreign investors’ domestic vehicles, outbound foreign exchange payment and outbound investment by domestic entities, which cover a wide range of major FDI and M&A activities relating … Continued
Highlights: China’s two governmental regulators for anti-monopoly conducts in China announced that they will increase the transparency of their enforcement actions under the Anti-Monopoly Laws. One head of SAIC discussed its future goals: (1) to investigate those typical antitrust cases having serious impact on market competition; (2) to investigate monopoly conducts of public utility enterprises … Continued
Executive Summary: Recently, as part of its foreign exchange reforms, the People’s Bank of China signed a bilateral currency swap agreement with the Reserve Bank of Australia. This report discusses the currency swap agreement and the introduction of PRC laws relating to the internationalisation of the RMB. MAIN ARTICLE Background The currency swap agreement Major … Continued
Highlights: Following two important circulars regulating outbound investments made by central State-owned enterprises (SOEs) issued in the middle of 2011, SASAC issued a new circular on 18th March 2012 to provide further elaborations on certain specific requirements and to further enhance the supervision on SOEs’ outbound investments. Among other supervisory measures lately adopted by … Continued
Highlights: Valuation adjustment mechanisms have been often used by private equity firms in their portfolio investments in China, which had never been tested until recently ruled invalid by a Chinese local court. It remains to be seen if and how this decision will impact the investment practice of private equity firms in China. Main Article: … Continued
Highlights: A framework for reviewing foreign M&A transactions which may contain a national security component has been established under several pieces of legislation. The legislation contains a relatively high-level outline of the filing procedure, application documents, as well as a timeline of the review process. The Chinese authorities maintain broad discretion to conduct national security … Continued
