China is moving to shape the pricing of the vast quantities of industrial metals it produces and consumes, with moves to attract foreign companies to trade on the Shanghai futures exchange, which would ultimately fragment global markets.
After spending the past two decades buying mining assets around the world to secure the metals needed for industrialization and, more recently, to meet its carbon emissions targets, China now wants greater control over how prices of those metals are determined.
But it has lost market share in metal futures trading and must convince international investors to use the Shanghai Futures Exchange (ShFE), according to interviews with more than a dozen brokers, traders, analysts, risk managers and consultants with direct knowledge of ShFE’s plans .
