(China Alert) Towers Watson Global 500: The real China numbers

·31 Chinese managers made the Towers Watson Global 500
·Z-Ben Advisors puts the figure above 100
·Omissions veil real opportunity in China

Update: The 2014 top 500 global asset manager list was released by Towers Watson earlier this month with 31 Chinese managers making the cut. This represents a significant increase from eight in 2013. Like our readers, Z-Ben Advisors makes heavy use of the Global 500 for the high-quality map of the global asset management industry it provides. However, China remains a very difficult market for everyone to measure, including us. Public disclosure and self-reporting, the two main inputs for Towers Watson’s rankings, remain unreliable in China, a point which Towers Watson acknowledges forthrightly and clearly in their discussion of the year’s results. To augment their efforts, and to give clients a means of comparing Chinese and global AUM directly, we have applied Towers Watson’s methodology to Chinese asset managers using industry group or difficult-to-source data that our in-house research generates. Our hope is that an enhanced view of China’s top asset managers will help sharpen readers’ assessment of mainland business development prospects, and better compare them to other regions when client targeting and resource allocation decisions are made.

Using Towers Watson’s minimum standard of USD8.1bn in AUM (Boston Trust & Investment, 500th on the current list) as our guide, we believe 115 Chinese asset managers qualify as Global Top 500 firms. Asset management on the Mainland is a business conducted by a much more diverse (and occasionally opaque) group of companies than FMCs alone. Discretionary asset management in particular is a …..

If you would like to request access to the full China Alert along with more information of our client advisory platform please email us at: [email protected]