Alibaba Link Propels Massive Growth at Tianhong Asset Management
A year and a half ago, Tianhong Asset Management Co. was laboring in obscurity on the margins of China’s money management industry, overseeing a paltry $1.9 billion in assets. But in June 2013, the Tianjin-based firm teamed up with Alibaba Group Holding to launch a money market fund that investors could access with just a click on the e-commerce giant’s website. The fund, named Yu’e Bao, attracted more than 500 billion yuan ($81 billion) in just nine months.
That stunning growth vaults Tianhong to the top of the China 20, Institutional Investor’s exclusive annual ranking of the country’s largest fund managers. The company managed a cool $89.5 billion in assets at the end of March. That’s nearly 10 percent of the entire $904 billion industry, and almost 17 percent of the assets managed by all the firms in the China 20, a number that grew by 38.5 percent last year, to more than $535 billion.
Tianhong knocks longtime industry leader China Asset Management Co., known as ChinaAMC, into second place in the ranking and pushes traditional leaders Harvest Fund Management Co. and E Fund Management Co. each down a notch to third and fourth, respectively. ICBC Credit Suisse Asset Management — a joint venture between China’s largest bank, Industrial & Commercial Bank of China, and Switzerland’s Credit Suisse — rises one notch, to fifth place.
Click on China’s Top 20 Money Managers in the navigation table at right to view the full list. Subscribers can access additional data, including details on the firms’ portfolio mixes.
For information on how this ranking was compiled, click on Methodology.
How This Ranking Was Compiled
Institutional Investor’s tenth annual China 20 ranking identifies the country’s top fund managers by assets. New York-based Senior Research Editor Jane B. Kenney, with the assistance of Researcher Serina To in Hong Kong, compiled the ranking from a variety of sources, including questionnaires the institutions filled out themselves. II staff refined these data through follow-up e-mails and telephone calls. When official data were unavailable, II obtained figures from websites and other public sources. All figures are in millions of dollars, as of March 31, converted from yuan using the exchange rate on that date. Portfolio totals may not equal assets under management because of currency conversion and rounding.