Shanghai and City of London seek to strengthen financial ties

Shanghai Mayor Gong Zheng met with a delegation led by the Lord Mayor of the City of London, Nicolas Lyons, on Friday.

Gong said that Shanghai and the City of London established friendly exchanges as far back as 1996, forming a close and cooperative exchange mechanism in the areas of finance and investment services, and have achieved positive results.

The City of London is a global leading center for finance, commerce and economics. Shanghai is China's largest economic center city, and considers finance as one of the city's most important functions, and is accelerating construction to become a world-class international financial center.

Shanghai is willing to work with the City of London to develop cooperation in asset management, green finance, financial technology, and financial openness, learn from and adopt advanced concepts, promote mutually beneficial and win-win development.

The city welcomes British financial institutions to expand their business in Shanghai, and to jointly promote the optimization of financial services, improve financial efficiency, ensure financial security, support green and low-carbon transformation, promote the interconnection and convenience of cross-border investment and financing, and enhance cross-border investment and financing facilitation.

Lyons said that finance has always been London's core competitive advantage, and he is pleased to see more and more Chinese financial institutions coming to London to conduct business. Shanghai's impressive economic growth and the focus of the construction of the Shanghai international financial center are very compatible with the advantages of the City of London.

The two sides have many common areas of concern and great cooperation potential. The City of London hopes to closely cooperate in the field of green finance and sustainable finance, jointly promote financial technology innovation, deepen the Shanghai-London Stock Connect mechanism, and work together to promote financial openness.