JP Morgan fund invests in China, India
Tuesday, 16 March 2010
HONG KONG, Mar 15 (Reuters): JP Morgan Asset Management has invested almost a quarter of its $860 million Asian infrastructure fund in China and India assets, as part of efforts to complete investments in the next two years.
The Asian Infrastructure & Related Resources Opportunity Fund invested in cement and water treatment companies in China and a hospital in India over a month after the fund was closed, said Philip Jackson, chief of JP Morgan's Asia infrastructure investments group.
"Ten or 15 years ago, Asia was an optional, alternative investment as a geography. The teenager has come of age and I find it hard to believe that any global investor could really not have Asian investment as a core part of their holdings," Jackson said.
"Clearly we anticipate China and India will be the two largest markets, but frankly we are anticipating we could be investing equally easily in Korea or in Southeast Asia," he told Reuters in an interview late Friday.
Heady economic growth in China and India has enticed investors to tap the potentially lucrative emerging economies whose populations make up a third of the world's.
Jackson said the rationale behind investing in Scitus Cement in China's southwestern province of Guizhou was that the region needed huge resources such as cement to build up its infrastructure network.
The Asian Infrastructure & Related Resources Opportunity Fund invested in cement and water treatment companies in China and a hospital in India over a month after the fund was closed, said Philip Jackson, chief of JP Morgan's Asia infrastructure investments group.
"Ten or 15 years ago, Asia was an optional, alternative investment as a geography. The teenager has come of age and I find it hard to believe that any global investor could really not have Asian investment as a core part of their holdings," Jackson said.
"Clearly we anticipate China and India will be the two largest markets, but frankly we are anticipating we could be investing equally easily in Korea or in Southeast Asia," he told Reuters in an interview late Friday.
Heady economic growth in China and India has enticed investors to tap the potentially lucrative emerging economies whose populations make up a third of the world's.
Jackson said the rationale behind investing in Scitus Cement in China's southwestern province of Guizhou was that the region needed huge resources such as cement to build up its infrastructure network.