CHINA’S EMERGENCE as both a source and a destination for global hedge fund money provides an opportunity for Ireland, one of the most important offshore centres for the worldwide funds industry. However, Ireland will have to fight rivals such as Luxembourg to win the business.
This was the message from Conor O’Mara, managing director and head of Asian TMT sales at the investment bank Jefferies Inc in Hong Kong.
O’Mara (right) is also chairman of the Irish Chamber of Commerce of Hong Kong and local representative for the Irish Funds Industry Association there.
“We need local representatives here,” said O’Mara, who is a regular visitor to the Chinese capital. “The Chinese fund managers will be the next big managers. The next Harvest and Founder, the next Fidelity, will be Chinese funds. Our competition is from places like Luxembourg. They have a paid presence in Hong Kong and are working away.
“The key is for us to be card-carrying here, which is why I represent the IFIA in Hong Kong. And we’re going to do the same thing in Beijing.”
The Irish funds industry has grown every year over the past 23, with the exception of a slight fall in 2008.
As well as a leading hedge fund centre, it is now the fastest-growing undertakings for collective investment in transferable securities (Ucits), or retail, funds centre in the world – up 500 per cent in the past 11 years.
Ireland attracted twice as much in new Ucits money as all other European domiciles put together in 2011 – and five times more in the last quarter, and most faced significant outflows.
O’Mara sees a great role for Irish public-private partnerships when it comes to dealing with industries in Asia in which Irish people are working, whether it be the funds or heavy industry.
Another reason O’Mara was in town was to discuss ways of bringing the Chamber of Commerce network within the greater China area closer together.
The chamber in Hong Kong is a busy one, and Macau recently established a chamber, but the question of running them is a difficult issue on the mainland as there are considerable regulatory hurdles.
The government frowns upon representative groups other than those sanctioned by the Communist Party.
The US and the European Union have their own chambers, but smaller countries encounter a lot of challenges when trying to start organisations.
However, there are efforts afoot to regularise the various Irish networks in China, which will provide an opportunity for the organisations to co-operate more.
