ARC Investment Partners Archives - Investment Options Asia

While much of the world is still feeling the economic downturn, China stands strong with its confidence in its economic future. Last week, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said that he is confident in China’s economy. He has openly welcomed foreign companies like ARC Investment Partners to share in the country’s growth.

As Wen said during his keynote speech at the opening of the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in the northeastern city of Dalian, “We sincerely welcome foreign companies to actively involve themselves in China’s reform and opening up process and share the opportunities and benefits of China’s prosperity and progress.”

China is becoming more desirable for outside investors of all sorts. Recently, HSBC Holdings Plc. found that wealthy people in China are the youngest in Asia, outside of Japan. In a recent HSBC report that covered Australia, China, India, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan, they found that the average age of people in China who have liquid assets of at least 500,000 yuan was 36. This was in comparison to 48 in Hong Kong and 38 in Indonesia.

According to the report, more than 25% of wealthy Asians will be investing in greater China and Southeast Asian funds and equities in the next six months. Certainly, fund companies outside of China similarly have their eyes set on this region, and on the ever-increasing economic expansions happening in China.

The expansion into the Asian market is being seen in many sectors. In the technology sector, companies are trying to get into the market and to target products to this new rising wealthy class. Investment managers like Adam Roseman of ARC Investment Partners have also made China their main focus on interest. Global banks like HSBC, Citigroup Inc. and Standard Chartered Plc are expanding into this area as well.

Many investment partners today have their eyes on China. And for good reason. Consumer spending in China is predicted to come close to doubling by 2015 in the retail sector alone, according to a new report by the Chinese Academy of Social Science (CASS). And this comes on the back of spending that has already been increasing a great deal, as companies like ARC Investment Partners have noted.

From 2006 to 2010, retail spending saw an average growth rate of 18.1% each year, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. It is Chinese women who are leading this wave of consumer spending and that are helping to secure the future economic growth in China.

As reported in a recent financial newsletter by Adam Roseman of ARC Investment Partners, 3000 women were recently surveyed in 12 Chinese cities by China Market Research Group to see what their spending habits are like. 85% of those surveyed said that they planned to spend more in the coming six months than they did in the previous six.

This key sector of the economic market in China has yet to be taped into by western brand managers – but women are not only influencing the household budgets in China. They are influencing the overall decision-making in the home and even in the homes of their parents. Forbes has actually reported, in a report last year, that half of the world’s 14 self-made billionaire women are Chinese. Raised in one-child families in China, millions of girls have been told that their parents’ futures’ rely on them; and they are fulfilling those expectations to ensure proper care for their retiring parents.