OREANDA-NEWS. Over the past eighteen months, VTB Bank has built a comprehensive interbank infrastructure that offers an extensive range of options for servicing Russian-Chinese trade and developing the Group's business in China and Hong Kong.

VTB was also the first Russian bank to obtain:

  • access to large-scale funding from China Development Bank Corporation in the amount of CNY 12 billion to finance Russian-Chinese foreign trade operations;
  • access to debt securities trading on the Chinese interbank bond market;
  • the right to participate in bidding on the International Board of the Shanghai Gold Exchange and Shanghai Free-Trade Zone;
  • the ability to conclude derivatives deals with banks in mainland China.

VTB has significantly grown yuan-denominated payment volumes, which increased by more than 50% to 5.5 thousand. Settlement volumes in yuan grew by more than 250%, to over CNY 120 bln.

VTB Bank offers its clients a wide range of investment, credit and hedging services including derivative instruments, as well as products for working with raw materials markets in China. Since the beginning of the year swap deals with the Chinese currency grew by more than 12x to USD 14.2 bln equivalent.

As of today, VTB has signed a number of trade and export finance deals with major banks in China totalling more than RUB 160 billion, allowing VTB to offer customers the best solutions to finance their trade flows. VTB is a leader in this area, and has introduced innovative solutions designed for letter of credit transactions in yuan. One such product is an import letter of credit in yuan financed in Russian rubles. This product is certainly of interest to importer companies with no or negligible amounts of export revenues. In addition to the standard benefits of using letters of credit, VTB’s clients can avoid FX risks on their contracts and finance the contracts in Russian rubles on special conditions. In 2015, the amount of letter of credit transactions in yuan has increased 13-fold.

VTB Bank enjoys additional advantages in servicing trade between Russia and China, by virtue of its own licensed branch in Shanghai, a unique edge for a Russian bank. The license gives us the right to conduct international operations in national currencies. Right now, VTB's market share of yuan-ruble FX operations in China is about 89%. In 2015, the volume of the Shanghai branch’s yuan-ruble FX operations exceeded CNY 20 billion.