A Chinese quantitative hedge fund and an unidentified employee donated 359 million yuan ($53 million) to charity last year, upping its philanthropic efforts as Beijing pushes firms to do more in the name of “common prosperity.”
(Bloomberg) — A Chinese quantitative hedge fund and an unidentified employee donated 359 million yuan ($53 million) to charity last year, upping its philanthropic efforts as Beijing pushes firms to do more in the name of “common prosperity.”
Zhejiang High-Flyer Asset Management gave 221 million yuan to charitable organizations, while one of its employees nicknamed “an ordinary piggy” donated 138 million yuan, the company said on its Wechat account late Monday. That brought total donations since 2020 to 580 million yuan, according to the company.
China’s top quants have been giving back more after the industry’s combined assets jumped 10-fold in four years to exceed 1 trillion yuan in 2021, drawing regulatory scrutiny and weighing on performance.
High-Flyer apologized to investors for its poor returns in December 2021, and its assets have dropped to about 60 billion yuan from more than 90 billion yuan after it closed off inflows and some investors withdrew money amid a stocks rout.
“For many people, 2022 was not an easy year,” High-Flyer said in the statement. “The more difficult the times are, the more precious is hope and faith” and greater the need to help each other.
Many of the nation’s tech giants have stepped up donations in recent years amid a regulatory crackdown as President Xi Jinping’s “common prosperity” campaign, aimed at redistributing wealth, gathers support. Among the latest moves, JD.com Inc. is slashing salaries and diverting some of the savings toward an employee benefits fund, Bloomberg reported in November.
Other quants including Lingjun Investment, Ubiquant and Shanghai Minghong Investment Management Co. said they’ve been bolstering charity work, without giving total amounts. Lingjun said in December it plans to build classrooms for schools in seven regions, while Minghong donated more than 300 boxes of anti-Covid equipment including masks to Shanghai in April.
China quants increased product launches later last year, raising billions with many players re-opening to new money after performance stabilized. The 28 top players managing more than 10 billion yuan each averaged a 0.1% loss for 2022. That’s down from a 20% gain in the previous year, though it outperformed most equity indexes, according to Shenzhen PaiPaiWang Investment & Management Co.
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