Iron ore futures opened up to foreign investors

China will allow overseas individual investors to participate in the trading of iron ore futures on the Dalian Commodity Exchange starting Wednesday, the exchange said in an online statement on Tuesday. The announcement came after the country opened iron ore futures to foreign institutional investors in May last year as part of financial opening-up efforts. Iron ore contracts were launched in 2013 and broadly traded among producers and traders, with futures prices closely correlated to spot prices. Management Co and ICBC Credit Suisse Asset Management Co, have applied to the country’s securities regulator to issue 10 equity investment products for the sci-tech board by Tuesday. The mutual fund products offer an alternative investment channel for many small investors. Express delivery giant SF Holding announced on Wednesday that its net profits for 2018 fell 4.57 percent from the previous year on rising costs and new business expansion. Net profit attributable to its shareholders totaled 4.56 billion yuan ($680 million), SF Holding said in its preliminary financial results for 2018 filed to the Shenzhen Stock Exchange. Apart from rises in costs, the firm also invested in expanding diversified logistic services to meet market demand, it said. Meanwhile, revenue rose 27.6 percent year-onyear to 90.9 billion yuan thanks to fast growth in the traditional and new businesses better catered to meet customer demands. South Korea’s net external financial credit hit a new record high last year as local tech companies acquired foreign firms, central bank data showed on Wednesday. Net external financial credit, which measures overseas financial assets subtracting external financial debts from them, reached a fresh high of $413 billion as of the end of 2018, up $151.3 billion from a year earlier, according to the Bank of Korea. It came as Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, the country’s top two memory chip makers, purchased foreign firms, leading to an increase in overseas financial assets. External financial assets gained $58.9 billion over the year to $1.52 trillion at the end of last year.