Lu Li, former senior FX trader and market-maker for renminbi currency pairs at China Construction Bank, will be the fund’s portfolio manager. Li has also run a $5 billion principal investment portfolio for the bank. James Wang, managing director and chief investment officer of CSIIML, serves as CIO for the fund. The new CSI RMB fund will invest in foreign exchange, rates and credit, and is targeting an annual return of between 10% and 20%.
Craig Lindsay, the managing director and chief operating officer of CSIIML, who also serves as the chief risk officer at the fund, says the offering is the first non-equity-focused fund the firm has offered – and also the first with a renminbi-denominated class of shares. “It is attracting a lot of interest in the market,” he says. The fund also has Hong Kong and US dollar-denominated classes of shares.
The fund manager considers the internationalisation of the renminbi to be the “mega-trend for this decade”. He says he expects China to continue liberalising the renminbi in a bid to promote it as an international currency. Citic also sees the currency appreciating against the US dollar at a rate of 5% to 7% per year in the next three years.