China’s onshore funds emerge as ‘buying force’ in Alibaba’s Hong Kong IPO, existing shareholders increase their stakes
- Mainland Chinese institutional investors, large fund houses among first-time buyers in Alibaba’s secondary offering in Hong Kong
- More than half of demand in international tranche came from new investors, CFO Maggie Wu says
About one-third of the tranche allocated to international buyers was taken up by first-time mainland Chinese investors, a company official said, while the rest was absorbed by investors in the Asia-Pacific region and global funds.
“The global offering in Hong Kong was very successful, with a wide range of investors buying the shares. We see two groups of investors as a buying force in the international offering,” Alibaba’s chief financial officer Maggie Wu said in an interview. “They are mainland institutional investors and fund houses, and large global investors including from the Asia-Pacific region. Many of these shareholders also took the opportunity to increase their holdings.”
China’s fund management industry has charted an explosive growth for a late starter in 1998. Assets under management stood at 13.8 trillion yuan (US$1.96 trillion) at the end of September, compared with 575 billion yuan five years earlier, according to data compiled by the Asset Management Association of China.
That pool of capital could reach 36.3 trillion yuan by 2025, making it the second-largest in the world after the US, according to a forecast by KPMG.