Private Equity Strategies

Data Snapshot: Chinese Private Equity Gets More Open

Tuesday, January 22, 2013

By: Bailey McCann, Private Equity Strategies

As we noted in Regs Watch, China has opted to leave private equity and venture capital funds out of the regulatory fray until governing bodies can decide how best to monitor them. Near the end of 2012, Shanghai also quietly launched a new pilot program - RMB Qualified Foreign Limited Partner (RQFLP), to permit qualified foreign fund managers and asset management companies to raise offshore RMB from offshore investors to invest in RMB private equity funds set up in Shanghai. According to attorneys for global law firm Mayer Brown, participants in the RQFLP program are intended to include both well-established foreign fund managers with the fundraising capacity for offshore RMB and the Hong Kong subsidiaries of Chinese asset management companies and brokerage firms.

Factsheet - What You Need To Know:

The number of limited partners in the Chinese venture capital and private equity industry totaled 7,511 by the end of 2012.
6,323 of the limited partnerships, or 84.2%, were Chinese, while 1,134 were foreign limited partnerships.
Of the 9,000 private equity deals and venture capital deals completed in China since 2001, $100bn, much from US funds still remains invested in the region.
2,200 deals completed before 2008 still have $22bn in funds tied up in slow exits, as firms have a hard time since the halt in Chinese IPOs.

Sources: China First Capital, Zero2IPO Group

This article was published in Opalesque's Private Equity Strategies our monthly research update on the global private equity landscape including all sectors and market caps.