“Interviews with 28 market participants show at least two dozen cases where regulators closely and frequently steered market participants through a range of coordinated actions this year to resist strong downward pressure on the yuan … efforts to manage the yuan involved more targeted and specific directions to banks and currency market participants … for example, whenever momentum seemed against the yuan, state-owned banks quietly became buyers, the traders said. This generally happened around psychologically significant currency levels and seemed aimed at containing volatility … On Sept. 8, the yuan struck a 16-year low. A few days later, managers at eight major banks were summoned to Beijing to meet PBOC officials, according to five banking sources, two of whom attended the meeting. They were told companies wishing to buy more than $50 million would need approval from the PBOC, three sources said. Bankers were also told they needed to cut spot trading, stagger dollar buying and not hold net long dollar positions at the end of any trading day.”
