How Invesco won our Best Business Development award

Last week AsianInvestor announced the remaining five awards at a celebratory dinner for winners of this year's prizes, which were announced online last month. We will feature a detailed write-up on all the winners in the forthcoming June edition of AsianInvestor  magazine. 

This week we outline why those five marquee winners scooped their prizes. We have already featured Invesco as Asset Manager of the Year and UOB Asset Management as Asian Fund House of the Year.

Best Business Development
Invesco
Building assets amid market volatility isn’t easy. But, as Invesco demonstrated last year, it’s definitely possible. 

The US-based asset manager gained 51 new mandates across Asia-Pacific last year from pension funds, banks, insurance companies and sovereign wealth funds. These helped the firm and its joint ventures raise its institutional AUM by 38%.

Japan was a particular strong point; Invesco expanded its AUM in the country from $10 billion to $16 billion, as investors finally invested more into global fixed income and risk assets.

All told, the fund house gained 36 top-up mandates from existing clients, while its net sales were its best since 2011.

Not everything went well. Invesco experienced redemptions from Chinese investors as the country’s stock market collapsed. Yet its Chinese joint venture, Invesco Great Wall, still brought in 23 new segregated accounts and eight top-up mandates through its wealth management platform.

Meanwhile, Invesco trailblazed with new products. It was one of the first managers to receive approval for the mutual recognition of funds scheme, and it launched the first Stock Connect fund in Hong Kong last year, raising $1.8 billion in assets.

In August 2015, Invesco set up an investment solutions team, headed by Zhiyi Song, the first product from which was a RQDII structured note, which launched in Hong Kong in December.