Chinese exchanges in joint benchmark

In China, the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges will launch a joint benchmark index of China’s top 300 companies on April 8.

This would make possible a future offering of trading in index futures. Such a move is said to be “impractical” in the near future but a possibility later on.

The launch of the joint index is also said to indicate a possible future merger of the two exchanges.

The Chinese equity markets have been having a hard time recently due to concerns about the government’s dominating ownership (two-thirds of shares) in the listed companies.

The Shanghai composite index hit a six-year low last month over fears that the worth of investors’ holdings would drop if there was a rapid sale of state shares.

Commodities futures have been very successful in China, but the trading of other sorts of futures has not yet been approved by the government there.

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