The Asia 100

Asia’s Top Money Managers Report Mixed Results

Institutions that finish in first place on the Asia 100, Institutional Investor’s annual ranking of the region’s largest money managers, report mixed results for the year through December. The leading firms in India and Japan — Life Insurance Corp. of India and Japan Post Insurance Co. (Kampo), respectively — saw their assets under management decline, while their counterparts in Australia and China — Macquarie Group and China Life Asset Management Co. — report AUM increases for the same period.

“The  Asian market is getting more sophisticated,” observes Christopher Peck, a partner in Singapore–based Maiora Asset Management. “I think having a niche product is useful now as far as investors have more clarity, whereas in the past the multistrategy guys said, ‘Give me money, and I’ll decide what to do with it,’ ” he adds. Maiora Asset has four funds, including one that makes only private investments in Japan’s multibillion-dollar solar industry. “People do a ton of  homework now before making an investment,” Peck explains.

China still brings business to asset managers that know how to pick stocks, from the Hong Kong exchange’s H-share market to the qualified foreign institutional investor program, which allows access to the otherwise blocked A-share market in mainland China. China had handed out 229 QFII licenses as of  July 2013, but they still represent just a bit more than 1 percent of all free-float A-share capitalization.

Value Partners, a Hong Kong firm with most of its $10.1 billion in assets under management in Chinese equities, chooses shares based on the belief that Beijing’s economic reforms, such as urbanization and growth in consumption, will eventually support prices. “We agree there’s a slowdown in China growth,” says fund manager Philip Li, but he attributes that to the transition from an export-driven economy to one more reliant on consumption, which he regards as positive in the long run.

The asset manager opened a New China Policy Fund in March and plans an equity fund this year based on its second QFII quota award, worth $100 million. The New York Stock Exchange–traded Asia Pacific Fund also gave Value Partners a $100 million Chinese equities mandate in late 2013.

To view the top money managers in Australia and Japan, click on the country link in the navigation table at right.

To view the leaders in China, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam, click on Other Asian Countries Rankings.

To view the largest holders of Asian equities by firms domiciled outside the region, click on International Ranking.

For information on how this ranking was compiled, click on Methodology.