China's Securities Private Fund Filings Rise 37.51% as Custody Concentration Deepens

Wind data showed that 10,782 securities private fund products had completed registration and filing in China as of September 8, up 37.51% from 7,841 in the same period last year, according to Jiemian News. The number of custodians involved fell to 32 from 37 a year earlier, and banks including China Construction Bank, Guangfa Bank, Ping An Bank, Zheshang Bank and Minsheng Bank have not acted as custodians for newly filed products this year. The top eight custodians were unchanged from a year earlier. Guotai Haitong Securities ranked first with 2,942 products under custody, up 44.36% year on year, while its share rose to 27.29% from 25.99%. CITIC Securities ranked second with 2,017 products, up 49.85%, and its share increased to 18.71% from 17.17%. China Merchants Securities ranked third with 1,336 products, but its growth rate was only 11.15% and its share fell to 12.39% from 15.33%. Huatai Securities, China Securities (CSC Financial), GF Securities, Industrial Securities and Guosen Securities ranked fourth to eighth with 992, 654, 395, 393 and 367 products, respectively. China Securities and Guosen Securities posted the fastest growth among that group, at 74.87% and 50.41%. The eight leading firms together handled 9,096 products, or 84.36% of all filings, up from 83.24% a year earlier. Jiemian News also reported that the three most active private fund managers this year — Square and Investment, Mingshi Private Fund and Mingyu Investment — had filed 638 products in total. Guotai Haitong Securities and CITIC Securities were custodians for 166 and 140 of those products, respectively, while China Merchants Securities, China Securities, GF Securities and Huatai Securities handled 70, 51, 39 and 33 products. An industry source said tighter regulation has raised custodians' responsibilities beyond asset safekeeping to include valuation checks, investment supervision, look-through verification, incident reporting and disclosure review, reinforcing the advantage of large custodians with stronger systems and risk controls.