HK Family Office Partners With Top China Fund to Target the Rich

One of Hong Kong’s biggest property agencies is ramping up its family office business by partnering with China’s No. 2 mutual fund to push wealth management products amid a real estate slump.

Centaline Wealth Management Ltd., a subsidiary of Centaline Group, will start offering products including fixed-income, money market fund and exchange-traded funds with China Asset Management , according to Larry Hung, founding partner of the family office division.

“Some of our clients have already purchased these products and we hope to give them more choices in the future,” Hung said in an interview in Hong Kong on Tuesday. 

The collaboration comes as Centaline saw its core business shrink across Hong Kong and mainland China due to the property market downturn. The company’s staff has dropped about 67% to 20,000 compared with three to four years ago and its outlets have halved to about 1,200.

But it’s also facing stiff competition in wealth management as banks and other rivals boost operations in Asia. Centaline has expanded its family office services since last year as it looks for new avenues of growth. 

Its wealth arm has $500 million in assets under management since August, half of its goal, said Kelly But, also a founding partner of the family office division. Over half of its clients come from Hong Kong and the company has tried to use its real estate network to tap clients who have $3 million to $5 million in assets, she said. 

The venture is the first with a multi-family office in Hong Kong for ChinaAMC , a unit of China’s second-largest mutual fund manager by AUM, according to data compiled by a mainland industry association.

Private wealth assets under management in Hong Kong may nearly double to $2.3 trillion in six years, according to Bloomberg Intelligence, with the Asian financial hub projected to surpass Switzerland as the world’s top cross-border wealth center. 

Hong Kong had more than 2,700 single-family offices based in the city last year, following the government’s push to bolster its status as an Asian wealth hub, according to a Deloitte survey. The city is also winning back wealthy Chinese by rolling out the red carpet for the rich while rival Singapore scrutinizes foreign money.

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