FILE PHOTO: A man wearing a mask walks by the Shanghai Stock Exchange building at the Pudong financial district in Shanghai, China, February 3, 2020. REUTERS/Aly Song/File Photo
SHANGHAI: Shares of China’s Hua Hong Semiconductor Ltd jumped 15% in its trading debut in Shanghai after it raised 21.2 billion yuan (US$2.96bil or RM13.5bil) in the largest sale of new equity in the Asia-Pacific region this year.
The stock traded as high as 59.88 yuan in early trading before paring gains.
The firm sold 408 million shares, or 24% of its total share capital, at 52 yuan each.
Half of the offering was alloted to 30 strategic investors, with the rest distributed among funds and individuals.
The company is already listed in Hong Kong.
Hua Hong joins a slew of semiconductor firms to have debuted in mainland China this year.
Giving the companies access to public markets is in sync with Beijing’s plans to support the industry in a bid to counter a US-led campaign to block access to cutting-edge technologies.
The United States has blacklisted Chinese companies and research institutes in diverse fields from chips and supercomputing to cloud and data mining.
Hua Hong’s listing on Shanghai’s Star board follows a 2014 initial public offering (IPO) in Hong Kong, where it raised about HK$2.6bil (RM1.52bil).
The company makes semiconductors on 200mm wafers for specialty applications, providing products for consumer electronics, communications and computing.
Meanwhile, China’s domestic market for IPOs, the world’s busiest since last year, has been showing signs of cooling.
Proceeds raised in exchanges in Shenzhen, Shanghai and Beijing have been declining since March amid concerns about the country’s economic growth.
Meanwhile, in Singapore, Point72 Asset Management has grown its team by more than 50% since early 2022 to 100 people, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The Singapore office’s hiring picked up around the end of last year and accelerated in the last six months, the person said, requesting not to be named because the matter is private.
The company also brought on ex-Marshall Wace analyst Wei Lim as a portfolio manager, focusing on long-short equity, the person said.
The growth was underpinned by hiring investment people and those with tech and data skills from the local market, the person added.
Point72 declined to comment in an emailed statement.
The company’s Singapore head, Rob Edmiston, moved to the city from Hong Kong last year, according to his LinkedIn profile. It first set up an office in the city-state in 2009.
The firm’s rising headcount underscores Singapore’s position as a growing hub for hedge funds in Asia.
The sector’s assets under management grew by 30% in 2021 to S$257bil (US$191bil or RM870.96bil), the biggest dollar increase on record, according to the most recent data from the Monetary Authority of Singapore.
Many global multi-strategy platforms have grown the funds they oversee by performing well in the past three years and gained new investors, said Tony Ernest, managing partner at hedge fund talent consultancy Monroe Partners Asia.
That in turn means they need more portfolio managers to invest the funds, leading to ramped up recruiting last year.
“A lot of the hires have been macro, fixed-income related,” he said, adding that was one reason why hiring in Singapore has been more pronounced than in Hong Kong.
“Much of the fixed-income, macro and also quant talent is based here in Singapore and not in Hong Kong, which has traditionally been more of an equity hub for portfolio managers.”
Ernest said the pace so far this year has been slower.
But with returns at most global firms continuing to be positive, the companies will be on the lookout for fresh talent in both locations, he added.
Hong Kong remains Point72’s largest office in Asia, with Singapore in second place, followed by its Tokyo unit.
The firm’s billionaire owner Steve Cohen told Japanese media earlier this year that he planned to increase staff there by around 20%, which would bring the headcount to about 50.
Part of the growth is being driven by the firm’s quantitative investing efforts, including its subsidiary firm Cubist Systematic Strategies.
In June it hired Jijie Zhao as a sub-portfolio manager, in addition to portfolio manager Naveen Putcha, who joined the firm in January. — Bloomberg
