(Yicai) April 3 -- China's leading brokerages returned to high growth in their international operations last year, Shanghai Securities News reported today. This was partly because of success in overseas business areas such as equity financing.

Revenue at Huatai International Financial Holdings, Citic Securities International, and Guotai Junan Financial Holdings was HKD20.06 billion (USD2.58 billion), USD2.263 billion, and HKD7.83 billion (USD1.01 billion), respectively, last year, after increasing 41 percent, 41 percent, and 46 percent from the year before, the report said.

Net profit also surged, with Huatai International logging HKD7.17 billion, a 259 percent surge from 2023. Profit at Citic Securities International, Guotai Junan Financial and China Merchants Securities International was USD530 million, HKD1.42 billion (USD182.6 million), and CNY425 million (USD58.2 million), respectively, all up by more than 100 percent.

CICC International ranked first among domestic brokers for both global equity financing and global initial public offering financing, with a combined investment banking transaction volume in excess of CNY900 billion (USD123.2 billion).

The top brokerages seized the opportunity from the recovery of the Hong Kong stock market, the insiders said, enlarging their allocation of investment banking resources for IPOs in the city. They also stepped up cross-border wealth management, grew their institutional trading business in the European and US markets, and increased fee income from US stocks and bonds.

The brokerages also beefed up their financial services to meet the overseas needs of domestic firms in areas such as global asset allocation and risk decentralization.

The industry insiders noted that the optimization of the Stock Connect helped trans-border capital flows, and the higher quota for the Qualified Domestic Institutional Investor scheme opened up more development space in the overseas asset management business.

To deepen their international business, several securities firms boosted the capital and anti-risk ability of their overseas units last year. Citic Securities raised its capital in Citic Securities International by CNY6.53 billion (USD894 million), and GF Securities increased its capital in GF Holdings Hong Kong by HKD2.14 billion.

Editor: Tom Litting