OREANDA-NEWS. May 21, 2013. As China starts direct trading between the yuan and Australian dollar from April 10, ICBC has dutifully performed its role as market maker, providing both bid/ask prices for the clients in the interbank foreign exchange market.

Turnover reached AUD 202 million as of end of April. Currently ICBC is the only bank approved as market maker for direct trading of yuan against four currencies at the same time: Russian rouble, Malaysian ringgit, Japanese yen and Australian dollar. Among all banks in China, ICBC is the market maker that provides the most number of foreign currencies to exchange directly with yuan.

Industry insiders commented that China and Australia are complementary with each other in economy and trade. China has a huge demand to import minerals, oil and gas from Australia, while Australia is a major customer of China for clothing and textile, light industry and chemical products. To companies from China and Australia doing import/export between the 2 countries over the years, direct conversion between yuan and Austrian dollar without involving a cross rate with USD will lower the cost. The potential is huge for AUD-RMB direct trading.

ICBC is a main market maker in interbank foreign exchange market. At the end of 2012, ICBC was the No.1 market maker for consecutive years in facilitating spot/forward/swap transactions. China Foreign Exchange Trading System ("CFETS") has recently announced the winners of excellent market makers for the year 2012. ICBC has been named "Best Market Maker" again and received numerous awards including "Excellent Market Maker in Automatic Price-Matching Trades", "Excellent Market Maker in Direct Trades".