UBS Futures Business In China Gets Green Light, Targets Groups Including Wealth Managers

Tom Burroughes

6 August 2014

UBS Futures Co, a China-based arm of the Swiss banking group, has been officially established to provide futures brokerage services in China, targeting institutional clients that could include wealth managers.

“The firm aims at offering integrated services to our clients. We can cater to the needs of wealth management clients if there is demand for futures broking service,” Yang Xia, head of equities, UBS Securities China and chairman of UBS Futures China, told this publication.

The launch comes after regulators gave approval to UBS Securities to acquire a majority shareholding in Shanghai Pumin Futures Brokerage. Located in Shanghai, the new entity is named UBS Futures Co., Limited, which has a registered capital of RMB120 million. The company is currently engaged in commodities futures broking, and as the next step, will expand into financial futures brokerage services, a statement said.

The firm said that UBS Securities is the first foreign invested securities firm in China with licences to conduct a full range of securities businesses.

The potential market size is large. says the The Hushen 300 Index, China’s first financial futures product launched in April 2010, has registered trading volumes for the year of more than RMB41 trillion, representing 26.5 per cent of the volume of all futures products.

The financial futures market has expanded rapidly in recent years. In 2013, the trading volume including the newly introduced treasury futures, reached RMB141 trillion, or 52.72 per cent of the total futures products trading volume.