Director of Guangzhou Financial Bureau: All virtual currency platforms in Guangzhou have exited the market normally

"We have not had any online lending institutions go bankrupt this year. All our online lending institutions are now exiting in an orderly and smooth manner, and the remaining few are also transforming in accordance with the deployment of the state and the province." On December 25, Qiu Yitong, director of the Guangzhou Local Financial Supervision and Administration Bureau (referred to as the "Guangzhou Financial Bureau"), introduced the latest progress in Guangzhou's financial risk prevention and control work at the "2019 Guangzhou Financial (Beijing) Investment Promotion Conference" held in Beijing.

In addition, the cleanup and rectification of Internet equity financing, foreign exchange trading platforms, asset management and cross-border areas in Guangzhou have been completed, and all virtual currency platforms have exited the market normally.

As of the end of November, the Guangzhou Financial Risk Monitoring and Control Center monitored more than 120,000 enterprises in Guangzhou, covering 11 districts and “7+4+1” local financial formats in Guangzhou.

On November 5, the official website of the Guangzhou Financial Bureau announced the first batch of voluntary withdrawal from online lending platforms, totaling 23. According to a third-party data statistics, as of now, at least 17 provincial and municipal regulatory authorities or local Internet financial associations, including Sichuan, Henan, Chongqing, Guangzhou, Hubei, Shandong, Hunan, Xinjiang, Tianjin, Guizhou, Ningxia, Beijing, Shanghai, Zhejiang, Shenzhen, Yunnan, and Liaoning, have announced the list of institutions to be withdrawn, among which Sichuan, Chongqing, Henan, Shandong, and Hunan have announced that all P2P online lending businesses in their jurisdictions have been banned.

At the end of November this year, the Office of the Leading Group for Special Risk Rectification of Internet Finance and the Office of the Leading Group for Special Risk Rectification of Online Lending jointly issued the "Guiding Opinions on the Pilot Transformation of Online Lending Information Intermediaries into Microfinance Companies" to guide some qualified online lending institutions to transform into microfinance companies.

On December 25, the list of microfinance companies in Guangzhou published on the official website of the Guangzhou Financial Bureau showed that as of December, there were a total of 112 microfinance companies in the city.

As of the end of November, the balance of deposits and loans in RMB and foreign currencies in Guangzhou reached 10.58 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 14.03%, ranking first among the five major cities of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Tianjin.

As of now, Guangzhou has a total of 180 listed companies at home and abroad, with 20 new companies added this year, with a total market value of 2.5 trillion yuan, including two companies listed on the Science and Technology Innovation Board and three companies approved by the Shanghai Stock Exchange; a total of 493 companies are listed on the New Third Board, with 8 new companies added this year, with a total market value of 79.346 billion yuan and a total fundraising of 15.87 billion yuan; from 2019 to date, the issuance scale of credit bonds in Guangzhou has reached 857.23 billion yuan.

(Editor: Li Yilin)