Nordea Asset Management has been approved as Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor by the government in China. It means that Nordea Asset Management is licensed to trade directly on the stock exchanges in Shanghai and Shenzhen in the so-called China A-share market.
The China A-share market is ranked as the third largest equity market in the world with around 2.500 shares listed and a total market cap of approximately USD $4.0 trillion, nearly equivalent to the size of the Tokyo Exchange. However, foreign investors, such as Nordea, hold less than 2 percent of the trading.
“Essentially, we have acquired a very exclusive access to a stock market, which is expected to grow considerably and become more open to foreign investors in the coming decades, and which is currently priced at attractive valuations,” says Allan Polack, Nordea’s head of asset management.
Nordea Asset Management has furthermore entered into an investment management agreement with Libra Capital Management, an investment advisor specialised in the China A-share market and with offices in Hong Kong and Shanghai.
“Equipped with this license and the partnership with Libra, we are able to provide institutional and retail investors with the opportunity to invest directly into the China A-share market in a responsible and prudent manner,” Allan Polack says.
The investment index compiler MSCI plans to include China’s mainland-based A shares into the MSCI Emerging Markets Index from May 2015, and it will announce a firm decision in June 2014, when the consultation process with investors is completed.
Asset Management is part of the Nordea Group, which has assets under management totalling EUR 233 billion (31.12.2013). The business area offers Global investors exposure to a broad range of investment funds via its active distributors, which include banks, asset managers, independent financial advisors and insurance companies. Its main product is the Nordea 1, SICAV, which encompasses a diverse spectrum of high quality products. Nordea 1, SICAV has constantly grown in terms of volume and has steadily gained in reputation. This growth is the result of the success of its active management of products belonging to the following asset classes: value stocks, growth stocks, theme-oriented funds and dedicated sector funds, as well as multi-asset strategies, long/short strategies, bond and money market funds.