China Plans to Relax Rules on Foreign Firms Investing in Bad-Debt Managers

What’s new: China is planning to allow overseas nonfinancial firms to make equity investments in domestic financial asset management companies (AMCs) and lower the bar for overseas financial institutions to do so, in a bid to further open up its financial market.

The changes are set out in draft rules released on Friday by the state administration for financial regulation (SAFR), a new watchdog. Financial AMCs are bad-debt managers, such as state-owned China Huarong Asset Management Co. Ltd. and China Galaxy Asset Management Co. Ltd.