The New York-based giants joint venture with BOC International Investment Managers, will start selling its first fund on Nov. 18 and will be listed on the southern Shenzhen exchange in the first quarter of 2005. The offering is only the nations second listed open-ended fund. BOC International Holdings, the investment Bank of China, owns 67% of the venture while BOC and Merrill each own 16.7%.
Merrill set up its mainland venture in July in an attempt to tap the $1.3 trillion in personal savings by Chinese investors facing the countrys collapsing welfare system. Investors can either trade listed open-ended funds like regular stocks or redeem cash as with a traditional mutual fund.
Chinas fledgling fund business is poised to explode as more than 90 billion yuan has been raised through funds in the first six months, pegging total domestic assets under management at $25 billion. In addition to Merrills recent entree, this has attracted a number of foreign firms including
The staff of Money Management Executive ("MME") has prepared these capsule summaries based on reports published by the news sources to which they are attributed. Those news sources are not associated with MME, and have not prepared, sponsored, endorsed, or approved these summaries.
