London is stretching away from its rivals as the world’s biggest centre for trading the renminbi outside China, easing fears that the impact of Brexit could threaten its status as the world’s dominant foreign-exchange hub.
In the second quarter an average of $85bn of renminbi changed hands in London every day, up 10 per cent from the first three months of the year, and 23 per cent higher than the same period a year earlier, according to a report published on Monday by the City of London Corporation and the European office of the People’s Bank of China.
That gave London a 43.9 per cent share of renminbi transactions carried out in offshore markets from April to June, up from 38.6 per cent in the same period in 2018. London’s gains came at the expense of Hong Kong and other minor centres such as Sydney and Toronto, and put its share of renminbi trading on a rough par with its total share of the $6.6tn-a-day FX market.