Asset Management
Allianz Explores Majority-Owned China JV – Media
Several Western wealth and asset management firms have created majority-owned JVs with local banks in China. Allianz declined to comment to this publication about a report that it was in talks with banks about a China venture.
Allianz is reportedly
talking to Chinese banks to create a majority-owned asset
management venture in the Asian country, another example of a
Western firm seeking to push into the market.
The German firm's main asset management arm, Allianz Global
Investors, has been holding talks over the past few months with
Industrial Bank and China CITIC Bank, among other lenders,
Reuters quoted unnamed sources as saying.
The newswire quoted AllianzGI as saying that it is committed to
the China market but did not comment on specific plans.
Allianz declined to comment to WealthBriefingAsia on the
matter.
Several Western wealth and asset management firms have created
majority-owned JVs with local banks in China. Examples include
BlackRock, Goldman Sachs and Barclays. In 2019, Chinese
regulators allowed foreign firms to create such ventures –
Allianz is following this trend.
Such moves, including the launch of funds, have stirred
controversy over the extent to which Western firms should do
business with China at a time when Beijing has been at odds with
the US and Europe over human rights, the autonomy of Taiwan, the
national security crackdown last year in Hong Kong, and other
topics. At the same time, China has been lifting restrictions on
foreign wealth managers, for example, by ending restrictions on
US asset managers selling mutual funds to individual investors.
Last September, BlackRock raised about $1 billion for the first-ever mutual fund solely run by a foreign firm that is allowed to sell to Chinese individuals. In the same month, Paris-listed BNP Paribas was reportedly preparing for its asset management arm to form a wealth management venture with a unit of Agricultural Bank of China. In May, it was reported that UBS and China Life Insurance Group's attempt to create an asset management joint venture in China had been thrown off course because the insurer was being investigated for corruption.
