China's securities regulator said Friday that it has granted Columbia University a Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor (QFII) licence.

But the brief statement, posted on the website of the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC), did not give the size of the quota that Columbia University had been granted.

Columbia University got the first QFII licence since China said in November 2007 that it would expand the QFII investment volume from $10 billion to $30 billion.

Under the QFII scheme, the New York-based university will be one of the foreign institutions allowed to invest in yuan-denominated securities in China.