Public funds' asset value hits five-year high

The net asset value of Chinese public funds increased 30.77 percent year-on-year to 2.87 trillion yuan ($454.97 billion) by the end of 2012, reaching a five-year high, the Shanghai Securities News reported on Monday.

In the last year, 255 new funds with 650 billion yuan in assets were launched, hitting an all-time high, according to data from China Galaxy Securities Co Ltd. About 80 percent of the new funds were fixed-income products with lower investment risk, valued at 506.4 billion yuan.

The growth pace of 189 bond funds was the fastest, rising 219 percent year-on-year to 244.39 billion yuan in 2012, and with a market share of 8.72 percent, the data from Galaxy Securities showed.

Competition in the fund management sector is intensifying, analysts said. An increasing number of fund management companies belonging to the big State-owned commercial banks are growing very fast, such as ICBC Credit Suisse Asset Management Co Ltd, Bank of China Investment Management Co Ltd, and CCB Principal Asset Management Co Ltd.

Four of the companies in the top 10 list of China's largest fund management companies are owned by large banks, with the net asset value of each company close to 100 billion yuan, according to the Shanghai Securities News.