Assets Decline for Asia's Biggest Money Managers They say a rising tide lifts all boats, but dont tell that to Asian fund managers. The stunning rebound in Asian stock markets this year has failed to benefit most of the regions fund managers. Most investors are still licking their wounds from last years declines and have stayed on the sidelines this year.
Assets under management of the Asia 100, Institutional Investors annual ranking of the regions biggest money managers, declined by 11.8 percent, to $9.7 trillion, in 2008. Many big firms report little recovery in business so far this year. Assets at ING Group, the Dutch banking and insurance group that is the third largest international manager in Asia, have been roughly flat so far this year after tumbling by 25 percent in 2008, to $121.3 billion, says Grant Bailey, the firm’s Hong Kongbased regional general manager for Asia. "Clients are still quite wary," he explains.
"Investors are somewhat shell-shocked and finding it hard to come out of their burrows and write checks," says Paul Smith, CEO of Triple A Partners, a Hong Kongbased seeding platform for hedge funds. "There have been no new allocations to speak of coming into Asia."
How We Did It
Institutional Investor’s 15th annual ranking of Asia’s biggest institutional investors was compiled from a variety of sources, including questionnaires filled out by the institutions themselves, company Web sites and annual reports, and regulatory agencies. II researchers refined this data through follow-up faxes, e-mails and telephone calls. When official data were unavailable, we obtained figures from actuaries, brokerages and consulting firms. Estimates are footnoted where used. All data are as of December 31, 2008, for all countries except India, Japan and South Korea, for which data are as of March 31, 2009.
Senior Editor Jane B. Kenney led the project, with the assistance of Contributing Editor Donald Kirk in South Korea and Contributor Niraj Bhatt in India, as well as Researchers Carol To in Hong Kong and Katsuko Usami in Japan.
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