SHANGHAI/HONG KONG -- The head of China's securities regulator on Thursday announced new measures to increase insurance companies' holdings of Chinese stocks, marking the latest effort to boost investor sentiment just ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday next week.
Starting this year, major Chinese state-owned insurance companies will "strive to" invest 30% of their new premium income in mainland-listed stocks, Wu Qing, chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, told reporters. He said this should pump "hundreds of billions of yuan of new long-term funds" into the stock market.
