SHANGHAI: Shanghai Securities Journal has cited figures from TX Investment Consulting claiming 2,483 out of the 2,593 domestic registered mutual funds from 94 Chinese fund houses were profit-making in the first half of the year.
The country’s registered mutual funds recorded aggregated revenue of 866.7 billion RMB (US$138.6 billion) for the first half, against the sum of 520.9 billion RMB for the full year of 2014.
The results were mainly driven by the A-share rally earlier this year, when the Shanghai Composite Index benchmark climbed more than 27% between January and June. But the stock market has taken a tumble since July due to over-borrowing and an economic slowdown on the Mainland.
Shichen Liu, an analyst at Z-Ben Advisors, tells Asia Asset Management that the stock market has been dropping and has suffered from high volatility since late June, which has affected equity and balanced funds severely.
“Though [the] China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) asked [the] China Securities Finance Corporation (CSF) and Central Huijin [Investment] to save the market, it [has] just simply slowed the drop of [the] stock market. However, [the] SHIBOR (Shanghai Interbank Offered Rate) (overnight)) has been increasing since July, which indicates that money market funds would have higher returns in the second half. The overall performance will still see a large decline compared to the first half [figures],” Mr. Liu adds.
In terms of individual fund house performance, 34 Chinese asset managers secured profits of more than 10 billion RMB between January and June. Among which, China Asset Management Co (China AMC) was the most profitable player with 60.4 billion RMB in revenue. It was followed by Harvest Fund Management and China Universal Asset Management, which reported H1 revenues of 58.3 billion RMB and 46.7 billion RMB, respectively.
Other asset management giants such as E Fund Asset Management, GF Asset Management, and Fullgoal Fund Management were among the top 34 players.
In terms of fund types, equity funds and balanced funds were the major revenue contributors for the first half, generating 515.76 billion RMB and 258.5 billion RMB, respectively, which accounted for about 90% of total mutual fund profits.
