Briefs, December 6, 2012

More firms are using the yuan to settle cross-border trades, bankers at the London-Hong Kong Renminbi Forum said. Average daily trading volume on Hong Kong's real time gross settlement system, which serves the global yuan market, has hit 250 billion yuan (HK$311 billion), they said. In June, it was about 150 billion to 200 billion yuan. Enoch Yiu, Reuters

Pacnet, operator of Asia's largest privately owned submarine cable network, signed a deal yesterday to build a 450 million yuan data centre in Tianjin. Hong Kong-based Pacnet is co-developing the project with the district government and will start construction next year. It expects the facility to become one of its largest data centres when it is completed in early 2014. Bien Perez