China bans foreign financial news information providers to operate in China, backtracking on an agreement reached in a WTO dispute filed by the US, the EU and Canada in November last year, which was to allow companies like Bloomberg, Dow Jones and Thomson Reuters to distribute information to financial and corporate clients.
Financial information services businesses had been relatively unrestricted when China took the controversial step of ordering distribution through an agent wholly-owned by Xinhua, in essence giving a competitor the dual role of being a regulator. In the deal reached with the US, EU and Canada, China had promised to appoint an independent regulator, which is now not going to happen. Source: Financial Times
