The vendor says four Chinese banks - Bank of China (BOC), Bank of Communications, China Construction Bank (CCB), Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) - as well as the Bank of Montreal have signed agreements to use the Reuters Dealing 3000 matching service in China. Bank of Montreal was granted a license in July last year to provide local currency services to both foreign and local companies in China.

Reuters says the Dealing 3000 matching service enables banks in the country to trade approximately 39 global currency pairs in spot FX, including the US dollar, euro, Japanese yen, and pound sterling.

Zhang Wei Zhong, Chief Dealer, Bank of Communications in Shanghai, comments: "We are now able to access a large number of counterparties, giving us a much greater pool of liquidity. Reuters Dealing service is a great help as our trading volume in G7 currencies has increased tremendously following China's economic and trade growth."

Reuters said last year that it was targeting emerging markets and plans to grow its operations in emerging economies such as China.

Alexander Hungate, managing director, Reuters Asia, says the deals with the five banks show that "China is moving forward towards greater currency flexibility and major players in China are riding on the current and potential opportunities to grow their treasury FX businesses".

In 2004 Reuters won a deal to provide a global foreign exchange trading system for The China Foreign Exchange Trade System (CFETS), a subsidiary of the People's Bank of China, and its 300 member banks. Under the deal, CFETS, the operator of China's inter-bank FX trading system, deployed the Reuters Electronic Trading for Automated Dealing (RET-AD) at its centre in Shanghai.