Foreign investment caps to rise

BEIJING: China will allow foreign investors to take bigger stakes in domestic financial institutions as part of ongoing reforms, the central bank said on Monday, without specifying when. “We will ease stake limits for foreign investment in China’s financial sector appropriately,” the central bank said in an abstract of the 2006 financial stability report. The bank did not give a timetable for when investment curbs would be eased, or say by how much they would be allowed to rise. China currently only allows a single foreign investor to take a stake of up to 20 per cent in a domestic bank, with total foreign ownership in a single institution limited to 25 per cent.