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QFII fund suffers from US$1.79b redemption

(chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2007-06-28 14:27

Overseas investors should be prepared for the volatility of the Chinese stock market.

Recent data shows the FTSE/Xinhua ishare A50 China Fund, the largest fund raised by Qualified Foreign Institutional Investors (QFII) on the mainland A-share market, suffers from the largest amount of redemption of the past four months.

By June 25, a total of 82.6 million shares worth HK$14 billion (US$1.79 billion) according to the fund's latest unit net worth, were withdrawn from the fund in the past four months.

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The latest flood of redemption occurred on Monday, June 25, when investors withdrew 18.2 million shares of the fund, worth HK$3 billion within a day, almost comparable to a close-end mutual fund of the A-share market.

In fact, large-scale redemptions worth more than five percent of the total fund capital occurred frequently in the past five months.

Records show the scale of the ishare A50 fund peaked on March 1 this year, when its total assets reached nearly HK$20 billion, with a total volume of 152.4 million shares. However, a redemption trend has begun since then. Some believe the February 27 plunge of the A-share market greatly shook investors' confidence.

Fortunately, the mass redemption of the ishare A50 won't seriously impact the A-share market because the fund is run by means of an arbitrary mechanism developed neither in the mainland or Hong Kong, and therefore doesn't flow money directly into the A-share market. Meanwhile, the limited investment quota of QFII also eases the pressure from redemption on individual institutional investors.