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China QDII funds under-performed benchmarks last year
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2008-03-31 17:19

These four QDII funds, Southern Global being the first approved in September last year to invest 100 percent of its assets in global stock markets instead of low-risk, low-return bond and currency markets only, currently invested heavily in the Hong Kong market, which was vulnerable to difficult conditions of the US market.

However, the pace of growth of QDII funds in China was not hampered. Apart from the fifth QDII fund already launched in January, namely ICBC Credit Suisse China Chance Global Allocation Fund, several other fund management companies have recently gained QDII status and are preparing to launch their QDII products.

They include Huabao Industrial Fund Management Ltd, Fortis Haitong Investment Management Co Ltd, China Universal Asset Management Co Ltd and E-fund Management Co Ltd.

The four losing QDII funds were widely disagreed on the market prospects for 2008, but they were all optimistic about emerging markets like China, India and Indonesia, according to the newspaper.

Huaxia Global said the rate cuts of the US Federal Reserve may help ease the loan burden of house buyers, but it would do little to spur corporate investment or individual consumption.

Southern Global, however, believed there would be good opportunities for the US economy to make a soft landing this year, and they expected the profits of companies worldwide would continue to rise in 2008 on the back of a recovering US economy.

Many of China's QDII funds and products, including bank-backed funds, were pushed into a loss as the US credit crisis began to unfold and spread.

China Minsheng Banking Corp said on March 19 that it would liquidate a QDII fund and repay investors, as required if the fund's assets fell below 50 percent of their initial value. This had raised concern about a wider failure of QDII products.

China's banking supervisor on Friday had asked banks to fully evaluate investors' risk tolerance shortly after the liquidation announcement from Minsheng.


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