China Merchants Securities Co has submitted its plan to buy shares overseas to the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, China Business News reported, citing company Vice President Zhang Yuping.

The brokerage plans to design financial products with Merrill Lynch & Co and enable qualified domestic institutional investors to buy stocks abroad under the so-called QDII program, the Shanghai-based paper said, without giving details, Bloomberg reported.

China allowed its brokerage companies and mutual funds to buy shares overseas for the first time on June 20, as part of efforts to help securities firms diversify from the local stock market and to slow growth in the country's US$1.2 trillion of foreign reserves.

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