China has approved the country’s first foreign majority asset management joint venture, two months after Beijing accelerated the timeline to scrap the foreign shareholding limit in such tie-ups to next year.
French asset manager Amundi Asset Management will hold 55% in the joint venture with BOC Wealth Management, a unit of Bank of China, the companies say in a statement on December 21.
The partnership, which was approved by the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, is targeted to be launched in the second half of 2020.
Two years ago, Beijing said it would eliminate the 49% foreign shareholding limit in asset management joint ventures in 2021 but in October, the regulator said the measure would take effect in April 2020 in order to deepen financial reform.
This is Amundi’s second joint venture in China. In 2008, the company partnered Agricultural Bank of China to form ABC-CA Fund Management, with Amundi holding a 33.3% stake.
The joint venture with BOC Wealth Management “will allow Amundi to add a new pillar to its development strategy in China”, Chief Executive Officer Yves Perrier says in the statement.
Liange Liu, chairman of Bank of China, adds that the partnership “fully demonstrates that the accelerated opening of China’s financial market conforms to global market development trends”.
As of October, there were 127 asset managers in China, including 44 joint ventures with foreign companies, according to the Asset Management Association of China.
Paris-based Amundi had 1.56 trillion euros (US$1.72 trillion) of assets under management as of September 2019.
BOC Wealth Management had 1.2 trillion RMB ($171.1 billion) of AUM at the end of September.
