King & Wood Mallesons (KWM) successfully advised River Capital Limited (CE number: BGT071) (River Capital), a Hong Kong company licensed with the Securities and Futures Commission of Hong Kong (SFC) to provide asset management services to professional investors only, on the re-domiciliation of its Cayman mutual fund as a re-domiciled open-ended fund company (OFC) in accordance with Division 8A, Part IVA of the Securities and Futures Ordinance (Cap. 571). The fund will operate under the name of River Capital China Select Fund OFC.
This is the second non-Hong Kong investment fund re-domiciled in Hong Kong as an OFC since the introduction of re-domiciliation regime, which took effect on 1 November 2021.
The KWM team was led by partner and Head of Funds, KWM Hong Kong, Jingjing Jiang, with support from Liwen Wu, Ivy Wang, Francis Chan and Susan Zhang.
Jingjing Jiang, partner and Head of Funds, KWM Hong Kong, said: “We are very pleased to assist our client, River Capital, to successfully redomicile their Cayman mutual fund as an OFC in Hong Kong, making it the second successful re-domiciliation in the market since the re-domiciliation law took effect.”
“We are seeing increasing interest from fund managers in setting up funds in or moving their existing offshore funds to Hong Kong. As of 30 June 2022, 63 new OFCs have been established in Hong Kong since the introduction of government subsidy in May 2021, making a total of 76 OFC and 142 sub-funds. Additionally, almost 500 limited partnership funds (LPF) have been established in Hong Kong in less than two years”, continued Jingjing Jiang. “With the very successful launch of the limited partnership fund (LPF) regime and the OFC structure seeing strong momentum, we believe the ecosystem of the Hong Kong funds industry will continue to mature and become even more sophisticated.”
Zhiyang Pan, the founder of River Capital, said: “We are very pleased to be a pioneer with the use of the Hong Kong fund re-domiciliation regime. I am particularly impressed by the efficiency, responsiveness and practical approach taken by the SFC in handling our fund re-domiciliation and it only took them three weeks to approve our re-domiciliation application after we made the submission.”
“We decided to move our fund from Cayman Islands because Hong Kong provides a more efficient fund structure, making the operation of our fund easier and more cost-effective, therefore better and more competitive in generating returns for our investors”, commented Zhiyang Pan. “I would also like to thank the professionalism of Jingjing and the KWM team. Their expertise, especially their ability to provide commercial and practical solutions, combined with their can-do attitude have been instrumental in making our re-domiciliation smooth and successful.”
Any reference to "Hong Kong" or "Hong Kong SAR" shall be construed as a reference to "Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China".
