Tencent, Hillhouse team up to cater to rich Chinese
HONG KONG: Tencent Holdings Ltd and Hillhouse Capital Management Ltd are joining the throng of financial firms seeking to service the huge number of Chinese investors looking to diversify outside of the mainland.
GaoTeng Global Asset Management Ltd, the duo’s one-year-old venture, here, plans to start accepting money shortly from retail Chinese investors who have existing assets internationally, according to an emailed statement that didn’t provide an exact time frame.
GaoTeng has gotten asset management and securities advisory licences from Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission. Its first product will be a fixed-income fund that will be open to individual investors in the city.
“We will be better able to serve Chinese clients because we understand Chinese clients better,” said Wayne Bi, GaoTeng’s chief executive officer, in the statement. “We will design a select number of high-quality products that make sense for Chinese investors, helping them cut through a market that can often be homogenous and confusing to new participants.”
A weakening yuan amid escalating global trade tensions and domestic credit tightening is likely to spur Chinese interest in diversifying holdings outside of the world’s second largest economy.
China’s currency has depreciated 5.1 per cent against the dollar this year while the benchmark Shanghai Stock Exchange Composite Index is down almost 19 per cent in local-currency terms, making it the worst-performing primary share gauge tracked by Bloomberg.
The popularity of wealth preservation and expansion in China has skyrocketed over the past few years as incomes rise and more people move to the big cities.
Chinese citizens are expected to add more than US$1.9 trillion (RM7.86 trillion) to their international investments in the five years through 2020, an Industrial Bank Co and Boston Consulting Group Inc report estimated in 2016. That growing appetite has already seen local wealth managers like Shanghai-based Noah Holdings Ltd expand their product offerings to meet such needs.
Other large Chinese firms are already using their technological edge to help clients better manage their money. Jack Ma’s Ant Financial is selling wealth management products, including those offered by some 116 mutual-fund managers in China, according to a statement posted on its website last month.