The Shanghai-London Stock Connect is set to launch on 14 December, with the project opening up Shanghai’s market to even further foreign investment.
HSBC Holdings and Huatai Securities are set to be some of the first stocks available to trade, according to the South China Morning Post.
Investors are going to be able to buy stocks indirectly through depositary receipts. The Citigroup is going to be one of the custodian banks to oversee the conversion between depositary receipts and ordinary shares of the companies trading in both stocks.
Securities traded in the Shanghai-London link will also be in the form of depositary receipts, with Huatai becoming the first Chinese company to float the surrogate securities.
Similarly, HSBC will become the first foreign firm to issue Chinese depositary receipts.
Over the weekend, the Chinese securities regulator green-lighted Huatai, allowing it to sell 82.5 million global depositary receipts in the London stock exchange.
HSBC has not released its trading system yet, as it said in October 2018 it would still be working on the trading framework.
However, the launch of the link will require a higher threshold for Chinese investors to trade global depositary receipts. They would need to have CNY3m (£345,000 $439,000 €387,000) in their accounts to qualify for the stock programme. In comparison, the Hong Kong link only requires CNY500,000 (£57,000 $73,000 €64,000).
