Management Surveys: Hong Kong fund managers top of the class

Citywire, a London-based financial publishing and information group focused on the fund management industry, has come out with its latest global rankings of fund managers, including a ranking of the top Hong Kong managers. (See table.)

These managers are deemed to have local appeal, and are at least partly based in Hong Kong. The funds they manage are available to Hong Kong investors.

It is difficult to compare funds managing different assets across markets. For example, equity funds typically outperform bond funds, but equities are also riskier than bonds. When they lose money, they tend to fall a lot further than debt-focused funds. So a simple comparison of returns would be misleading.

The Citywire survey accounts for this fact by first looking at the extent to which a fund beats its stated benchmark. It next looks at the consistency of returns. If two fund managers made a 10 per cent return over three years, the fund that made slow and steady gains would be ranked higher than a fund with more volatile returns.

The survey does not consider fees in its calculations, on the view that fees vary by market and cannot be consistently reflected in the global survey.

Richard Lander, a Citywire director based in London, says the Hong Kong rankings are notable in the strong presence of equity funds in the list.