China’s Maison secures $200m for US dollar fund

The investor base comprises mainly institutional LPs, including the International Finance Corporation (IFC), Germany’s DEG, Italian insurer Generali, and Schroder Adveq. IFC announced in 2016 that it was considering an investment of up to $25 million in the fund and would expect to have a seat on the advisory committee.

Maison was founded in 2004 and established itself as a renminbi fund manager. The firm runs three local currency vehicles with total assets of RMB1.5 billion ($228 million) as of the end of 2015. The most recent two funds are each RMB500-600 million in size. Initial backers were primarily high net worth individuals, but Maison signed up Ping An Insurance as its first institutional LP in 2011. Other players have since come on board, including renminbi fund-of-funds.

The GP invests in early to growth-stage consumer companies, across three categories: lifestyle, technology, and services. Maison was the first institutional investor in drone manufacturer DJI in 2013. The company subsequently received funding from Sequoia Capital, KPCB and Accel Partners. It is reportedly in the process of raising another $1 billion at a valuation of around $16 billion.

Speaking to AVCJ in 2016, Roger Wu, a partner at Maison, said that renminbi managers raising US dollar vehicles would be an ongoing trend as part of a gradual convergence of the two currencies. “Currently there are some hurdles around foreign exchange policy and capital controls, but these will diminish over the next few years. At that time, a fund manager will be less worried about making an investment from a local vehicle or an offshore fund, or whether to list a company domestically or overseas,” he said.

Maison is not the only Chinese GP seeking US dollar capital in response to slowdown in renminbi fundraising that is to a large extent regulator-driven. Approximately $27 billion was raised by renminbi funds in the first six months of 2018, substantially less than half of the $80.4 billion raised in 2017 in total, according to AVCJ Research. Meanwhile, more than $19 billion was committed to US dollar funds in the first half of the year, compared to $6.9 billion for the full 12 months of 2017.

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• Topics
• Greater China
• Fundraising
• Growth
• GPs
• LPs
• China
• Maison Capital
• IFC
• German Investment and Development (DEG)
• Adveq Management AG