BlackRock Pushes Into China's Onshore Fund Management Arena

Tom Burroughes

2 January 2018

BlackRock’s wholly foreign-owned enterprise in Shanghai, BlackRock Investment Management (Shanghai) Co., has registered with Asset Management Association of China (AMAC) as a private fund management company, adding to a trend of such foreign firms pushing into the Asian giant’s marketplace.

The world’s largest listed asset manager can offer onshore investment products to eligible institutions and high net worth investors in China, said in a statement late in December.

“China is one of the most promising investment markets globally, and is a key component to BlackRock’s global strategy,” Ryan Stork, chairman, Asia Pacific, said.

The firm already offers onshore and offshore investment programmes in China. BlackRock’s onshore China investment quotas under Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor and Renminbi Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor schemes currently amount to approximately $9.5 billion (as of November 2017). BlackRock also takes part in the Hong Kong/mainland China equity market “stock connect” programmes; it has also launched two Qualified Domestic Limited Partnership products for Chinese HNW investors.

Among other recent cases of foreign firms launching products for the onshore China is Man Group, the listed hedge fund business. It has launched its first onshore investment strategy for qualified investors in China. This comes after this publication reported that Aberdeen Asset Management had gained access to the Chinese private fund market. Also in December, Aberdeen Asset Management (Shanghai), the wholly foreign-owned enterprise of Aberdeen Standard Investments, secured registration as a private securities investment fund manager with AMAC. Invesco and UBS have also looked to tap into the RMB10 trillion ($1.51 trillion) Chinese private fund market.