Connie Mckeage
China Asset Management Company, mainland China’s largest, as well as state-controlled, fund manager, has selected Australia’s OneVue to provide RE and unit registry services for its Hong Kong-based international arm. The deal represents a big leap forward for both parties.
Beijing-based China AMC, through its Hong Kong subsidiary, and Azure Funds Management – the Australian distributor – appointed OneVue for the services, it was announced last week. For OneVue, this is a potentially major expansion opportunity in Asia. For China AMC, this represents the first potential asset-gathering foray into Australia, which is the largest single market for professionally managed funds in the region (ex-Japan).
Connie Mckeage, OneVue chief executive, said: “The importance of winning significant strategic clients such as China AMC is not only the ongoing contracted revenue streams that are inherent in such contracts. More importantly, it’s that both domestic and international investment managers are becoming increasingly comfortable with OneVue, its processes and service offering.”
China AMC, however, is arguably the most respected Chinese SOE in funds management and has also proved to be the most innovative. For instance, in the early 2000s it contracted State Street Global Advisors to build China’s first domestic ETF. It also appointed US-owned T. Rowe Price for a big global equities mandate at a time when such an alliance was almost unheard of.
Both relationships have ended, given the Chinese predilection for wanting to insource most activities, but it is understood the parties remain cordial and open to future opportunities, according to a senior China AMC executive.
Azure Funds Management is a business unit of Perth-based corporate advisory firm Azure Capital.
Note: the author is a small shareholder in OneVue.