(Bloomberg) -- A Hong Kong fund manager has vaulted into the city's top-10 providers of exchange-traded funds in less than two years by riding a wave of demand for quantitative strategies.
Rather than the plain-vanilla indexing used by many, the ETFs sold by Premia Partners include multi-factor strategies tracking the Chinese economy and fast-growing technology stocks in Asia. While three of the four listed ETFs are trading below their initial prices, that hasn't stopped Premia from becoming the 10th-largest equity ETF provider by assets under management, according to data compiled by Bloomberg News -- a milestone hit in February.
| ETF Manager | Assets under management (millions of U.S. dollars at end-May) |
|---|---|
| State Street ETFs | 10,891 |
| Hang Seng Investment Management | 9,777 |
| iShares ETFs | 3,966 |
| CSOP Asset Management Ltd | 3,362 |
| China Asset Management | 2,073 |
| BOCI-Prudential Asset Management | 388 |
| HSBC Investment Funds Ltd | 343 |
| BMO Global Asset Management | 288 |
| Horizon ETFs | 250 |
| Premia Partners Co Ltd | 193 |
| Vanguard | 188 |
“There are a lot of gaps that a lot of the incumbents do not naturally have economic motivation to fill,” said Rebecca Chua, managing partner at Premia who previously worked at BlackRock Inc. “We had so many conversations with clients in the region and overseas that are looking to expand their allocation to China.”
Aleksey Mironenko, a partner and chief distribution officer at Premia, said “we're focusing on problems specific to the region.” Among the tactics Premia adopted for one fund is investing in companies in Vietnam, the Philippines and other Southeast Asian nations as potential beneficiaries or shelters from the U.S.-China trade war, he said.
--With assistance from Yusuke Takeshita.
To contact the reporter on this story: Gregor Stuart Hunter in Hong Kong at ghunter21@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Christopher Anstey at canstey@bloomberg.net, Cormac Mullen
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