Hong Kong-based asset manager MW GaveKal has launched the MW GaveKal China Fixed Income Strategy. The strategy will be accessible via a long-only, UCITS fund, which will invest in debt instruments denominated in RMB, HKD or SGD.
The strategy’s fixed income holdings may include government and corporate bonds though no more than 30% can be invested in non-investment grade fixed income instruments. It will have unhedged USD, Euro and GBP share classes, and the strategy will launch on 1 March, 2012.
MW GaveKal believes that, as the pace of financial deregulation in China accelerates, the internationalization of the RMB and the growth of the Chinese offshore bond market will prove to be major events for global financial markets; and that it thus makes sense for investors to diversify their fixed income holdings through the ownership of RMB, HKD and SGD bonds. The manager further believes that, over the coming years, the Chinese related fixed income markets and movements in currencies will most likely continue to be driven mostly by the ebbs and flows of Chinese policy. MW GaveKal is a joint-venture between Marshall Wace, a global hedge fund manager with offices in London, Hong Kong and Connecticut, and GaveKal Holdings, a financial-services firm headquartered in Hong Kong with further offices in Beijing and Denver. The MW GaveKal China Fixed Income strategy will be the fourth UCITS strategy focusing on Asia managed by MW GaveKal. MW GaveKal also manages separate accounts on RMB bonds and long-short equity funds on Japanese equities.
Louis-Vincent Gave (pictured), the CEO of MW GaveKal, will be managing the strategy. He will be relying extensively on the policy work done by the eight person GaveKal Research team based in Beijing as well as benefiting from the overall infrastructure of both Marshall Wace and GaveKal.
Gave says: “China’s attempt to create an offshore bond market and transform the RMB into a regional, or even global, trading currency could well be the most important financial event of the coming decade. Indeed, if China manages to do what Germany did in the 1960s and 1970s and transform its economic zone from a “USD trade-zone” to a “RMB trade-zone”, a possible development which is now clearly China’s goal, then the repercussions on regional trade, on the volatility of growth, on the way companies finance themselves, etc. will prove to be enormous. Of course, China can only be successful in its stated goal of making the RMB a trading currency if that currency is perceived as being strong (just like the DM was in the 1960s and 1970s). Which means that the People’s Bank of China will tend to err on the side of hawkishness (as the Bundesbank used to in its pre-European Central Bank days) and that the RMB should continue to gain against Western currencies willingly debased to accommodate failing welfare-states.”
Gave says: “In our view, the creation of the Chinese RMB offshore bond market could prove to be as important for the financial world as the creation of junk bonds by Michael Milken in the early 1980s. Basically, we are today witnessing the launch of a major new market which will change the world and we are privileged enough to have front-row seats.”
