The Shanghai subsidiaries of Bridgewater Associates and Winton Group got the regulatory approval to sell private funds in China this week, according to media reports.
In a July 3 press release, Winton said it started publishing research on the onshore market in 2008. The private fund management licence will allow the company to put this expertise to good use, said David Harding, the company’s founder and CEO.
“Winton’s PFM registration allows us to continue building our business in the Chinese markets for the long term,” he said. “We have been successfully advising Chinese investors in Chinese futures markets for eight years, and we look forward to developing our business in Chinese equities and futures markets in the years ahead.”
AllianceBernstein has named Alex Qian as its new CEO for China, the fund manager said in a July 3 press statement. Qian, who will be based in Shanghai, will lead the company to build its onshore asset management business. He will report to Ajai M Kaul, the firm’s regional CEO.
Kaul said AllianceBernstein wants to leverage the experience of the new China chief, who has worked for 20 years in financial services in Hong Kong and China.
“China is an important wealth management market and features prominently in our long-term growth plans,” he said. “Alex’s proven track record and his deep knowledge of China will be important in executing a thoughtful strategy.”
South Korea’s KB Asset Management was the sole recipient of new QFII quotas in June, according to figures published by the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (Safe). The manager, which held $500m of quotas before June, got an additional $1bn of quotas. Safe did not approve any new RMB QFII (RQFII) quota last month.
Non-financial corporate issuers sold Rmb340bn ($51.2bn) of debt instruments in June, up by about Rmb40bn year-on-year, according to figures published by the National Association of Financial Market Institutional Investors (Nafmii) on July 2.
Nafmii said that, overall, yields for these bonds moved up in June by about 5bp month-on-month. But when only looking at the period after the central bank said it would inject liquidity into the interbank market, bond yields have fallen on average by 3bp. One year AAA-rated papers were yielding 4.60% as of June 28. Nafmii also said that there were no new defaults in June.