Month: May 2012

China Selects Rural Area for Economic Pilot Program

In a fascinating and much-anticipated move, China has finally selected a province to begin a pilot project for financial reforms in the rural economy. Lishui in coastal Zhejiang will be the focus for the pilot program intended to help bridge the gap between the villages and the cities in terms of wealth. The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) has published guidelines for the pilot program with instructions to help the city of Lishui to build a financial infrastructure.

As the central bank said in a published statement on Thursday, "Through financial reforms and innovations, our goal is to set up a multi-layer, low-cost, wide-coverage modern rural financial service system in the pilot area."

China’s economy has a great deal of imbalance due to the financial differences in the urban and rural areas. The goal of the program is to help to create more economic stability by distributing the wealth more evenly and by helping those in rural populations to gain a better economic footing.

Trends in Asia Investing Today: A Glimpse at Oasis Investment Limited

Although some sources claim that Asian hedge funds have been struggling over the past year or so, there is much evidence to show this not the case. For instance, during the last year somewhere between 30 and 40 new funds were launched in Asia, including a significant number of high profile funds in Hong Kong.

Oasis Investments Limited, CICC Asset Management, and Azentus were among those more news-worthy funds which were launched last year, revealing the fact that hedge funds are still a popular investment vehicle for many investors looking for opportunities in the Asian market.

It is interesting to examine more closely the launching of the Oasis Investments Limited fund to see just how exciting the Asian market still is for investors. The Oasis Investments Master Fund II is a multi-strategy hedge fund that opened up to external investors at the end of the summer of 2011, aiming for total assets under management of $1 billion before closing the door to new money. Since the fund is a continuation of the strategies which were utilized during the 14 months the fund was operating internally with its own capital it is not surprising that much excitement was stirred when the fund began to seek outside investors hoping to cash in on something even close to the 100 percent annualized rate for its internal investors that the Oasis Investments Limited fund had returned during the past 14 months.