China Focuses Inward to Grow Sustainably: a Wall Street Transcript Interview with Catherine Yeung, Investment Director for Equities at Fidelity Worldwide Investment
67 WALL STREET, New York - January 23, 2013 - The Wall Street Transcript has just published its Investing in Asia and Other Strategies Report offering a timely review of the sector to serious investors and industry executives. This special feature contains expert industry commentary through in-depth interviews with public company CEOs, Equity Analysts and Money Managers. The full issue is available by calling (212) 952-7433 or via The Wall Street Transcript Online.
Topics covered: Investing in Asia - Growth at a Reasonable Price - Longer-Term Investing - Asia Pacific Investment Theses
Companies include: Fidelity Worldwide (FWWFX) and many others.
In the following excerpt from the Investing in Asia and Other Strategies Report, an experienced portfolio manager discusses her outlook for the Asian markets for investors:
TWST: Introduce us to Fidelity Worldwide Investment's offerings within the Asian markets, and tell us what sets your approach apart from your peers.
Ms. Yeung: We have one of the biggest buy-side research teams in the region, and that's very important to us. We have a large local presence, and combining that with our global network is very powerful for us. We've got over 51 investment analysts in Asia Pacific ex-Japan, and 22 portfolio managers. We've been in Asia ex-Japan since the early 1980s and been in Japan since the late 1960s. But in terms of ex-Japan, we moved in the early 2000s to have fund managers and analysts based in the countries that we invest in, to better understand the trends that go on in markets.
For example, we have investment teams in Sydney; in Singapore, focusing largely on the ASEAN markets; in Hong Kong, which is our major hub; in Seoul, as well as Shanghai and Mumbai. These teams are made up of all different nationalities, which we think it's important in this part of the world. We have funds here that focus on countries and regions, as well as different sectors.
TWST: Can you provide a broad-based look back at 2012 across Asia and touch on a few of the key themes that shaped the year for you?
Ms. Yeung: It was a volatile year. Markets in Asia did well, and in fact global markets did well considering this global wall of worry. But when you scratch under the surface, markets in Asia often behaved in a very rotational, erratic and volatile manner. That was tricky from a trading perspective. Also, the markets were very much driven by investor sentiment, and for the majority of the year, it was very much a risk-off environment. And many foreign investors - and about half of our clients are actually ex-Asian clients - still are of the mindset that Asian equities are very much a risky asset class. So in this risk-off environment, people gravitated toward your traditional defensive asset classes, which was negative for Asian equities even though the fundamental story in Asia was quite strong. I'm not saying that growth was on par with what we have seen over the past few years, because growth did fall off, but relatively speaking, Asia remained in good shape. Another key factor of last year was that most people were very bearish on China, and we are now seeing a flip. There were more bears out there than bulls, and a lot of people were talking about a hard landing again. In fact we thought the highest risk of a hard landing was in the third quarter of 2011...
For more of this interview and many others visit the Wall Street Transcript - a unique service for investors and industry researchers - providing fresh commentary and insight through verbatim interviews with CEOs, portfolio managers and research analysts. This special issue is available by calling (212) 952-7433 or via The Wall Street Transcript Online.
