While acknowledging there were some “green shoots” now being seen in the Chinese economy, Morgan Stanley CEO Ted Pick said there was still a need for greater transparency in Chinese regulations and policymaking.
Battling deflation will take time, he said at Hong Kong’s third annual Global Financial Leaders’ Investment Summit. “The name of the game is to reignite consumer confidence,” he said.
Speaking on the same panel, his counterpart at Goldman Sachs, David Solomon, said there was still a combination of issues that has kept global investors from deploying capital in the world’s second-largest economy.
Given the difficulty over the past five years to get capital out, “I think messages around the ability to both attract capital and have capital come in and come out are very important for global investors,” he said.
The comments came after China’s policymakers and top regulators vowed at an earlier panel to continue its opening up to foreign investors and firms, in their first public appearances with global financial luminaries at a major conference in Hong Kong.
“We welcome foreign investors to invest in China and share the dividends of China’s economic development,” said the deputy governor of the People’s Bank of China Zhu Hexin.
“China will continue to deepen mutual market access with Hong Kong and optimise connect programmes for stocks, bonds, and wealth management products and actively support Hong Kong to develop its offshore yuan market, he said.
Chinese officials have ratcheted up the frequency of interactions with global banks in recent weeks to gather their perspectives on the nation’s stimulus measures.
The securities regulator has especially had an interest in revisions global banks make to their economic forecasts and analysing daily flows to understand foreign investment trends, people familiar with the matter said.
China has rolled out a raft of stimulus measures since September to put the domestic economy back on its feet, followed by a promise to use more “forceful” fiscal policies next year to drive growth.
Solomon said more confidence as well as the continuing opening of the capital markets are very important.