International investors in Hong Kong are now able to buy shares denominated in the Chinese renminbi, as part of a new scheme launched by the city’s stock exchange on Monday.
Two dozen major Hong Kong and Chinese companies, including Tencent, Alibaba, Meituan and AIA Group, can now be traded in both the Hong Kong dollar (the city’s local currency) and the yuan. Shares denominated in one currency can be freely interchanged with shares denominated in the other. In total, the firms taking part in the “HKD-RMB Dual Counter Model” are worth about $1.5 trillion in value, or over a third of the entire Hong Kong stock market.
