the Chinese companies less and less attractive for Western investors due to politics and the uncertainty surrounding the second largest market in the world. Representatives from Man Group, Soros Fund Management and Elliott Management expressed concern about the prospects for Chinese stocks trading in New York and Asia. Their comments came just weeks after $ 59 billion investment firm Marshall Wace said some of these businesses had become “non-investable.”
“We are not putting money into China right now,” he confirmed Dawn Fitzpatrick, CEO and Chief Investment Officer of Soros Fund Management, at the Bloomberg Invest virtual conference.
Fitzpatrick has predicted that many listed companies in the United States they will soon move to Hong Kong. While it didn’t name any companies, Alibaba, JD.com and Didi among some of the largest Chinese companies trading in New York, which incidentally have been under pressure for most of the year, after China started a crackdown on tech companies. Alibaba and JD.com have dropped at least 33% since mid-February, while Didi has plummeted 47% since its market debut in late June.
The warnings from investors follow Beijing’s extensive anti-monopoly investigation into the Big Tech, Investors now fear for what comes next.
“If you invest in the markets, it is impossible not to have a vision of China “, Man Group Plc CEO Luke Ellis, who manages the world‘s largest publicly traded hedge fund company, told the Bloomberg conference. He added that the country looks less attractive than it did a year ago amid the crackdown on the technology and education sectors. Ellis also advised investors to be more agile, as holding investments with a 10-year horizon makes no sense in a world where significant political intervention and change is expected.
“What China is doing is pretty explicit, but it’s not that different from what we see in many Western markets,” he said. Still, some top money managers see long-term potential. “China will continue to grow faster than developed markets,” said Jon Gray, chief operating officer of Blackstone. “They have a very entrepreneurial culture, they have a government that wants economic growth to improve the quality of life, and I think this means, in general, that China should do well.”
Jonathan Pollock, co-CEO of Elliott Investment Management also suggested that there would be opportunities, although he added that thinking about “large distributions” is difficult.