Hainan Airlines Retailing (HNA Retailing) plans to purchase 80 percent equities of Home-run Supermarket from Australian retailing group Global Mart, according to the China Business News Wednesday.

The two parties have already signed related contracts which regulate that HNA Retailing will purchase Home-run through its subsidiary Jiadeli Supermarket. Once the purchase is completed, Home-run will become a subsidiary company of Jiadeli.

Currently Home-run operates more than ten stores mainly in Hunan Province. Expecting to become the leader in the chain retailing business, HNA Retailing is also contacting with retailers in Nantong.

“However, the mission is a great challenge for HNA Retailing’s capital chain due to its enormous need for capital, Lian Bo, analyst of Cash Financial Services Group, said.

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The central banks of Singapore and China are in talks to set the city-state up as a trading hub for the Chinese yuan, a report said on Monday.

The move would allow Chinese banks to do more business outside the Chinese mainland and also bolster Beijing’s aim to promote its currency as an international unit.

Hong Kong is the only city outside the mainland where offshore trading of the yuan is allowed.

The Wall Street Journal, citing sources familiar with the matter, said the People’s Bank of China had been receptive to interest from Singapore to be a market for the buying and selling of the Chinese currency.

It said, however, that a decision on the outcome of the talks was not imminent.

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) did not comment directly on the report when contacted, but said the city-state “is well positioned to facilitate trade-linked business flows with the mainland.”

The People’s Bank of China did not respond immediately to faxed questions.

A greenlight from China will boost Singapore’s status as one of the top financial hubs in Asia alongside Hong Kong and Tokyo. The city-state is the second-largest forex trading center in Asia after Japan.

Top leaders in Beijing want to see the yuan adopted as a global reserve currency to reflect China’s growing economic and political clout.

Allowing the yuan to be used more widely overseas also helps China reduce the amount of dollars flowing into the country, which is adding to its already world-beating foreign exchange stockpile and fanning inflation.

Last year, the MAS signed a three-year currency swap agreement with China that allows the city-state to tap up to 150 billion yuan ($23 billion) in liquidity from its Chinese counterpart.

In addition, banks such as HSBC, Singapore’s DBS Bank and the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China currently offer yuan banking services in Singapore.

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Iron ore imports in the first quarter increased by 14.4 percent to 177 million tons from a year earlier, marking a record high for a single quarter, the General Administration of Customs announced Sunday.

For March, iron ore imports increased 22 percent from the previous month to 59.48 million tons as steelmakers ramped up production after the Chinese Spring Festival.

While a 14.4 percent increase is not a huge change based on past data, the price change is significant.

Import prices on iron ore jumped 59.5 percent to average $157 a metric ton from a year earlier. The cost of iron ore imports jumped 82.5 percent to $27.7 billion, according to Bloomberg on Monday. Over the past two years, international iron ore prices have almost doubled.

“The main reason the price is still high at this stage is China’s continued demand for iron ore and the monopoly by the  (three) international mining giants,” Zhang Lin, a senior analyst with Beijing-based Lange Steel Information Center told the Global Times on Monday.

Meanwhile, a newcomer to the Chinese iron ore market may shake up market dominance by the “big 3,” Australia’s BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto, as well as Brazil’s Vale.

The new guy in town, Cliffs Natural Resources Inc announced last month it would shift its focus to Asia, and especially China.

Cleveland, Ohio-based Cliffs’ expanded into the Chinese market when it bought a Canadian company, Consolidated Thompson Iron Mines Ltd, in January.

Consolidated Thompson’s largest shareholder is Wuhan Iron and Steel (Group) Corp of China, with a 19-percent stake.  Wuhan Iron is a State-owned enterprise based in Hubei Province.

In 2010, Cliffs sold $1.3 billion worth of commodities to China. And the company has plans to double production at one site in eastern Canada to 16 million tons a year, which it will ship directly to China.

President of Global Commercial and Executive Vice President, Don Gallagher announced in mid-March that more ore from Minnesota and Michigan would be shipped to China in the coming year.

Cliffs is dominant in North American markets, despite the fact that the big three producers control 75 percent of the global iron ore market. Nearly 50 percent of production by the three companies is sold to China, which accounts for 80 percent of Chinese iron ore imports.

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