The hunt for more Chinese capital continues as Melbourne-based corporate advisory and wealth management firm BMY Group (BMYG) launches Australia’s first Chinese investor matchmaking platform, Allfin.
The platform will offer private equity deals in all industries as well as products such as Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) – not available in China – to BMYG’s approximately 30,000 Chinese high net worth and family office clients. It will kick-off in early February.
BMYG, which specifically targets Chinese investors and companies, says the Chinese capital market is deep, with plenty of investors interested in sectors outside of the top three popular investment areas of real estate, shares and peer-to-peer lending.
“China does have one of the top capital markets in the world but what they don’t have is enough investment options for both individuals and institutional investors,” BMYG chief executive Eric Gao said.
“Currently the major financial sectors for Chinese investors, mainly real estate and the stock market, are suffering bad performances so the Chinese market is hungry for more options to manage their wealth.”
As a measure of the depth of the market, BMYG’s latest survey of a sample of 8000 clients show that each client has an average $2.2 million – or $17 billion in total – in capital to deploy into private investments.
BMYG will run the Allfin fintech platform, vetting the deals that come online and matching them with the right investors from BMYG’s database. Not all deals will be advertised to all investors.
It will also offer professional services such as legal and accounting to assist with the deal process.
Tapping into China’s prolific phone and social media users, Allfin will have its own channels across all the mega Chinese social media platforms including Wechat and Weibo. s
‘Trusted platform’
Local investor matchmaking platform Wholesale Investor, which counts Investec Australia as one of its investors, has agreed to pour deals into Allfin. Other partners include PwC, Paul Bassat’s Square Peg, Advent Partners and private equity firm PEP.
Wholesale Investor founder Steve Torso says Allfin will “naturally” get the interest it is looking for because there is strong Chinese appetite in Australian businesses, particularly those in general technology, life sciences, robotics and artificial intelligence, and general advanced manufacturing technology such as 3D printing.
“There’s depth in the Chinese market but it’s not just financial depth but a depth in network that is also crucial to Australian businesses,” Mr Torso said.
“Allfin will be a hit with BMYG’s audience because it will offer them what they want – a trusted platform to tap into opportunities ordinary Australians take for granted.”
As an example, Wholesale Investor’s client medical technology group 4Dx was a recent hit in Shanghai.
All up, Allfin aims to make dealmaking a lot easier than the current manual networking exercise, Mr Gao says.
“Identifying the right Chinese investors is not always easy, it does require expertise. Secondly, funds managers and deals want more coverage,” he said.
Using the platform is free for investors while deal listers will pay a fee – up to $899 a month – to promote their products and deals.
