The Agricultural Bank of China secured a licence from APRA to operate as a foreign bank branch. It is the fifth Chinese bank to receive a banking authority. The US Treasury announced 'agreements in substance' yesterday with 19 countries, including Australia and New Zealand. Under the terms of an inter-government agreement for the implementation of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act rules, which will require global financial institutions to report details of their US customers' income and assets to the US Internal Revenue Service. This agreement provides greater certainty to local financial institutions ahead of the rules going live on 1 July 2014, thus lowering compliance costs and largely eliminates the prospect of 30 per cent of payments being withheld by the US tax authorities.