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19-03-2011, 12:23 AM
One of the best long term track records of managing money in Asia
Top Asia fund manager bearish on China
Aberdeen's Hugh Young takes a long-term view of opportunities.
Hugh Young, Aberdeen Asset Management Photo: Aberdeen
By Emma Wall 7:30AM GMT 12 Mar 2011
9 Comments
Hugh Young has been investing and living in Asia for nearly 20 years. The managing director of Aberdeen Asset Management Asia, Mr Young founded the subsidiary in Singapore in 1992 and now calls this country home.
"In the old days it was difficult to find people who understood our industry," he said. "And now Asia is supplying people to run multinationals. I look around the office now, and no longer is it a big expatriate industry – it's more a level playing field. It's extremely impressive."
Mr Young runs the Aberdeen Asia Pacific fund, which spans China and the Far East as well as India, Sri Lanka and Australasia. He has a buy-and-hold policy, with the average holding lasting eight or nine years.
"We're not terribly good at predicting market fluctuations, but think we are good at identifying the long-term winners," he said. "We see ourselves as investors, rather than speculators. Ideally, we want to hold a stock forever."
Why are you bearish on China?
"I think our concerns about the region are a bit different from most people: our prime concern is that we can't find many companies that we're comfortable with.
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I'd love to say we'd reduced our exposure when China got expensive and we'd done very well, but actually we haven't had a huge amount of money percentage wise in China since day one. The 'big boy' companies in China – the big banks, telecoms and energy companies – are all controlled by the state one way or another and while it's not necessarily bad for China, it's not a good thing for minority shareholders.
The smaller companies could be very interesting, but we're a bit too cautious to invest at the moment. There has been a raft of disasters and falsified accounts. The milk companies, for example, are conceptually interesting: as China gets richer, people should drink more milk – but then you get one company popping melamine into the milk and doctoring the product.
It's a typical concern when anything explodes upwards, as China has. It is ultimately good for the global economy, but it's a bit of a wild west. It's like investing in the United States in the early times, when a lot of people lost money.
A lot of people have just closed their eyes and said, "Well China is growing at 10pc, therefore I will buy Chinese equities", but frequently they have ended up with the money being gleefully taken off their hands and not returned.
What do you do to protect investors against inflation?
"Not much is the honest answer! Inflation is not a primary concern of ours.
Inflation can be very healthy. Markets were going up in a straight line and everyone was saying "put all your money in emerging markets and you'll be fine" and life, as we all know, never really works out like that.
Last year, Singapore was arguably a richer place than the UK, but growing at a faster rate than China, so it's inevitable inflation is going to happen if you've got interest rates at 1pc or 2pc.
Inflation is one of the broader macro issues that the region faces. They pulled down interest rates in line with the United States and Europe to rock bottom and then were surprised when the economy rebounded strongly. It's what the US and Europe were hoping would happen but, given their fundamentals are up the spout, hasn't.
In Singapore, people are not geared to the hilt with mortgages, they're sitting on piles of cash. By having low interest rates, the economies bounced back and then inflation came in."
What is your attitude to frontier markets?
"Very good marketing! You've got to be careful. Vietnam was getting a lot of attention a couple of years ago; billions were raised to invest in it but we've only found one company that passes our tests.
Our biggest exposure to frontier markets is Sri Lanka, which we've been investing in for over 10 years. It's got some really good companies.
What do you look for in a company?
Some of the investments are easy, buy the subsidiaries of companies you know and love from the UK: Glaxo India, British American Tobacco Malaysia, even Guinness Malaysia. We own Standard Chartered, and Australian companies Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton, which also have London listings.
There's also some excellent home-grown companies to choose from, anything from Singapore Airlines to leading Hong Kong property company Hang Lung. We also like the technology companies such as Taiwan Semiconductor and Samsung, which are leaders in their field globally.
Thematically, we think Asia over time should prosper, wages should go up and economies grow. Then what will people do – they'll open a bank account, get a mortgage, a credit card and, heaven forbid, start buying unit trusts and insurance policies. They will shop in a supermarket, rather than off a street stall.
Sadly, Tesco doesn't qualify as an Asian stock, although it does have big operations here, but if we can find that equivalent we'll buy it. If we can't get the stocks – because they don't exist, or because the ones that do exist in a sector are run by crooks – it doesn't bother us."
If you had to back China or India, which would you pick?
"We've had more money in India for 10 years or more – there are many financials and pharmaceuticals that have been professionally run for a long time, despite the incompetence of the government. China is almost the reverse, ultimately the government is doing a great job of developing China, but there are not as many companies we're comfortable investing in.
What's extremely sad is the corruption you have in these parts of the world. It could be so much better."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/perso...China.html
Top Asia fund manager bearish on China
Aberdeen's Hugh Young takes a long-term view of opportunities.
Hugh Young, Aberdeen Asset Management Photo: Aberdeen
By Emma Wall 7:30AM GMT 12 Mar 2011
9 Comments
Hugh Young has been investing and living in Asia for nearly 20 years. The managing director of Aberdeen Asset Management Asia, Mr Young founded the subsidiary in Singapore in 1992 and now calls this country home.
"In the old days it was difficult to find people who understood our industry," he said. "And now Asia is supplying people to run multinationals. I look around the office now, and no longer is it a big expatriate industry – it's more a level playing field. It's extremely impressive."
Mr Young runs the Aberdeen Asia Pacific fund, which spans China and the Far East as well as India, Sri Lanka and Australasia. He has a buy-and-hold policy, with the average holding lasting eight or nine years.
"We're not terribly good at predicting market fluctuations, but think we are good at identifying the long-term winners," he said. "We see ourselves as investors, rather than speculators. Ideally, we want to hold a stock forever."
Why are you bearish on China?
"I think our concerns about the region are a bit different from most people: our prime concern is that we can't find many companies that we're comfortable with.
RELATED ARTICLES
Sue Noffke: 'I was mistaken for a tea lady' 05 Mar 2011
I'd love to say we'd reduced our exposure when China got expensive and we'd done very well, but actually we haven't had a huge amount of money percentage wise in China since day one. The 'big boy' companies in China – the big banks, telecoms and energy companies – are all controlled by the state one way or another and while it's not necessarily bad for China, it's not a good thing for minority shareholders.
The smaller companies could be very interesting, but we're a bit too cautious to invest at the moment. There has been a raft of disasters and falsified accounts. The milk companies, for example, are conceptually interesting: as China gets richer, people should drink more milk – but then you get one company popping melamine into the milk and doctoring the product.
It's a typical concern when anything explodes upwards, as China has. It is ultimately good for the global economy, but it's a bit of a wild west. It's like investing in the United States in the early times, when a lot of people lost money.
A lot of people have just closed their eyes and said, "Well China is growing at 10pc, therefore I will buy Chinese equities", but frequently they have ended up with the money being gleefully taken off their hands and not returned.
What do you do to protect investors against inflation?
"Not much is the honest answer! Inflation is not a primary concern of ours.
Inflation can be very healthy. Markets were going up in a straight line and everyone was saying "put all your money in emerging markets and you'll be fine" and life, as we all know, never really works out like that.
Last year, Singapore was arguably a richer place than the UK, but growing at a faster rate than China, so it's inevitable inflation is going to happen if you've got interest rates at 1pc or 2pc.
Inflation is one of the broader macro issues that the region faces. They pulled down interest rates in line with the United States and Europe to rock bottom and then were surprised when the economy rebounded strongly. It's what the US and Europe were hoping would happen but, given their fundamentals are up the spout, hasn't.
In Singapore, people are not geared to the hilt with mortgages, they're sitting on piles of cash. By having low interest rates, the economies bounced back and then inflation came in."
What is your attitude to frontier markets?
"Very good marketing! You've got to be careful. Vietnam was getting a lot of attention a couple of years ago; billions were raised to invest in it but we've only found one company that passes our tests.
Our biggest exposure to frontier markets is Sri Lanka, which we've been investing in for over 10 years. It's got some really good companies.
What do you look for in a company?
Some of the investments are easy, buy the subsidiaries of companies you know and love from the UK: Glaxo India, British American Tobacco Malaysia, even Guinness Malaysia. We own Standard Chartered, and Australian companies Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton, which also have London listings.
There's also some excellent home-grown companies to choose from, anything from Singapore Airlines to leading Hong Kong property company Hang Lung. We also like the technology companies such as Taiwan Semiconductor and Samsung, which are leaders in their field globally.
Thematically, we think Asia over time should prosper, wages should go up and economies grow. Then what will people do – they'll open a bank account, get a mortgage, a credit card and, heaven forbid, start buying unit trusts and insurance policies. They will shop in a supermarket, rather than off a street stall.
Sadly, Tesco doesn't qualify as an Asian stock, although it does have big operations here, but if we can find that equivalent we'll buy it. If we can't get the stocks – because they don't exist, or because the ones that do exist in a sector are run by crooks – it doesn't bother us."
If you had to back China or India, which would you pick?
"We've had more money in India for 10 years or more – there are many financials and pharmaceuticals that have been professionally run for a long time, despite the incompetence of the government. China is almost the reverse, ultimately the government is doing a great job of developing China, but there are not as many companies we're comfortable investing in.
What's extremely sad is the corruption you have in these parts of the world. It could be so much better."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/perso...China.html
