Taiwan's Capital Futures Corp. said Monday it has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with its Chinese counterpart Cinda Futures Co. Ltd. on partnership in several areas of business. Under the agreement, the two sides will join forces to train personnel, develop technology for a trading platform and devise new financial instruments, Capital Futures said. Cinda Futures approached Capital Futures in the fourth quarter of this year about the possibility of securing a partnership in Taiwan, said Dan Chen, spokesman of the Taiwanese firm. 'China has a huge commodity futures market, while Taiwan specializes in financial futures trading, in particular stock index futures. There is great potential for future cooperation, ' Chen said. Chen said that because Cinda Futures is almost wholly owned by China's Ministry of Finance, Capital Futures has high hopes of benefiting from the connections in the development of its business on the mainland. Currently, Taiwan's futures companies are allowed to invest in their Chinese counterparts, but Chinese future companies are restricted from doing the same in Taiwan companies. 'Both sides are interested in cross shareholdings in the future. Once cross shareholdings are allowed, we will talk more about the investment issue,' Chen said. Cinda Futures, headquartered in Hangzhou of China's Zhejiang Province, runs 11 operations hubs in major Chinese cities such as Shanghai, Beijing and Dalian and Shenyang. 