Alipay’s Parent to Invest $193 Million in Chinese Asset Manager

October 10, 2013 Leave a comment

Alipay’s Parent to Invest $193 Million in Chinese Asset Manager

The parent of Alipay.com Co., billionaire Jack Ma’s online payments-system operator, will pay 1.18 billion yuan ($193 million) for a stake in a Chinese asset management firm as he expands into financial services. Zhejiang Alibaba E-commerce Co., controlled by Ma, will buy a 51 percent stake in Tian Hong Asset Management Co.’s enlarged registered capital, according to a statement to the Shanghai Stock Exchange today from Inner Mongolia Junzheng Energy & Chemical Industry Co., another Tian Hong shareholder. Zhejiang Alibaba’s planned investment in Tian Hong marks part of a wider push by Alibaba Group, China’s largest e-commerce company, founded by Ma, to expand its presence in the country’s financial industry. In June, Alipay began offering currency fund products by Tian Hong on a new platform called Yu’E Bao, meaning “leftover treasure” in Chinese. Online shoppers who use Alipay have the option of putting their spare cash into Yu’E Bao to earn variable returns. The service has no minimum requirement and users can withdraw their money anytime. Alipay had more than 800 million registered accounts as of July.

To contact Bloomberg News staff for this story: Aipeng Soo in Beijing at asoo4@bloomberg.net

Filed under Macro Trends, TMT Trends

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Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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