Shanghai FTZ Welcomes First Global Treasury Center

The Shanghai Pilot Free Trade Zone has welcomed the setting up of a global treasury center – the first of its kind for the Zone – by multinational enterprise the Aland Group.

Aland Group opened a non-resident free trade account under Citi China's advanced cross-border pooling program. The free trade account was launched in 2014 in the Zone by China's central bank, the People's Bank of China, to test China's capital account conversion in a risk-controlled environment.

Since then, the Shanghai head office of the People's Bank of China has encouraged the establishment of a fully functional onshore cross-border RMB pool, so that multinational enterprises can centralize management of their global RMB funds.

Aland President, Chang Liang, said the new cash-pooling structure enables the group to achieve its objectives of global treasury centralization and concentration of domestic funds in the treasury center.