China Plans Change to Opening-Price Mechanism of Money Rates

The People’s Bank of China plans to change the way it compiles the opening prices of benchmark money-market rates to help prevent manipulation, according to two people with knowledge of the matter.

The National Interbank Funding Center will ask 50 institutions to submit quotes anonymously for overnight and seven-day repurchase agreements from 9 a.m. in Shanghai, and use these to derive an opening level published at 9:30 a.m., according to a proposal outlined in a document sent to market participants. The center, a unit of the central bank, did not give a timeframe for the proposed change, the people said. Currently, the level is the first trade recorded each day.