WSJ Also Writes on China's Yu'e Bao
The Wall Street Journal writes "More Than a Third of China Is Now Invested in One Giant Mutual Fund." The article says, "The world's biggest money-market fund, overseen by China's Ant Financial Services Group, drew 114 million new investors last year despite regulatory pressure to shrink. Ant's asset-management arm on Wednesday said 588 million users of Alipay, Ant's highly popular mobile-payments network, had parked cash in its flagship Tianhong Yu'e Bao fund at the end of 2018. That means more than a third of China's population is now invested in the fund, whose assets under management totaled 1.13 trillion yuan ($168.26 billion) at the end of last year." The Journal adds, "Tianhong Asset Management, an Ant subsidiary that manages the giant fund, said its investor base grew 24% last year, even though the fund's assets under management shrank by 28% during 2018. The fund's size had reached 1.69 trillion yuan at its peak last March, worrying regulators about its potential risk to China's financial system. Its manager has taken a series of steps to limit inflows and reduce its holdings of hard-to-sell assets, dropping its yields in the process. Alipay also started offering more than a dozen other money-market funds to its users, which has drawn money away from the Tianhong Yu'e Bao fund.... More recently, the fund's manager has been trying to stanch outflows into money-market funds offered by rivals -- including Tencent Holdings Ltd. -- that have been advertising higher investment yields."
