Related News:
Value Partners' First-Half Profit Falls as Stock Declines Trim Fee Income
Value Partners Group Ltd., the Hong Kong-based asset manager backed by China’s second-largest insurer, said first-half profit fell 21 percent as weaker stock markets hurt performance fees and reduced capital gains.
Net income dropped to HK$91.6 million ($11.8 million), or 5.7 cents a share, in the six months to June 30, against HK$116.1 million, or 7.2 cents a share, a year earlier. It declared no dividend in a statement to the Hong Kong stock exchange today.
Economic uncertainty and the debt crisis in Europe unsettled stock markets in the first half, reversing the strongest annual rebound in the Hang Seng Index in a decade in 2009 and disrupting renewed capital inflows. The benchmark Hong Kong stock gauge dropped 5.5 percent this year.
The asset manager’s total revenue increased 27 percent to HK$207 million.
Profit declined on weaker paper gains on investments it still holds. Such appreciation was HK$3.6 million in the first half, against last year’s HK$57.9 million, it said in the statement.
Performance fees levied on investment profits slid 12 percent to HK$53.8 million. Managed fees charged on assets it oversaw surged 52 percent over a year earlier to HK$149 million.
Assets Managed
Value Partners’ assets under management surged 41 percent to $5.7 billion in the year to June, catapulting it past Japan’s Sparx Group Co. as the largest Asia-based hedge fund firm in Institutional Investor’s annual ranking.
Hong Kong accounted for most of the $319 million net capital inflows in the six months, while international subscription for its funds remained sluggish, the company said in the statement.
Assets rose to $6 billion by the end of July, Value Partners said in a separate statement today. The money manager led by Chairman and Co-Chief Investment Officer Cheah Cheng Hye, a former Asian Wall Street Journal journalist, oversaw $7.3 billion at the end of 2007.
The shares of Value Partners, 9 percent owned by Ping An Insurance (Group) Co., fell 0.2 percent at the 4 p.m. close of trading in Hong Kong before the results announcement. They gained 11 percent this year.
To contact the reporter on this story: Bei Hu in Hong Kong at bhu5@bloomberg.net
Rate These Stories
Rate this Page