1.   Foreign banks cannot participate in the interbank market since they are barred from conducting yuan business.

2.   This week, China said it would allow three foreign banks to start conducting local yuan currency business for the first time, on a trial basis in Shanghai.

3.   According to Ma, the bank never officially announced the end of the year as a target date for the start of trial yuan business by overseas banks.

4.   The bank hopes to conduct yuan business as soon as possible.

5.   Yang provided no timetable for the pilot program to open yuan business to a select group of foreign banks.

6.   A Banque Indosuez official told AFP last month that the PBOC had invited the French bank to apply for permission to conduct yuan business in early December.

7.   Two other banks -- Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corp. and Industrial Bank of Japan -- have also started doing yuan business in the past week.

8.   Most foreign bankers expressed interest in applying for sub-branch licences, saying they could serve their customers better and because it was a condition for getting the yuan business.

9.   Pudong is the only place in China where foreign banks can handle yuan business, he added.

10.   Schittenhelm said that the authorities should gradually open the yuan business as soon as the economic environment allowed it and not wait until all banks were paying equal taxes.