(Reuters) – Billionaire investor George Soros said BlackRock Inc investing billions of dollars into China now is a “mistake” and will likely lose money for the asset manager’s clients, according to an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal.
“Pouring billions of dollars into China now is a tragic mistake,” Soros wrote in the op-ed. “It is likely to lose money for BlackRock’s clients and, more important, will damage the national security interests of the U.S. and other democracies.”
Last month, BlackRock became the first foreign asset manager to operate a wholly owned mutual fund business in China, tapping the fast-growing $3.6 trillion retail fund market. This also comes after the government scrapped a foreign ownership cap in the industry on April 1, 2020.
Soros said BlackRock has drawn a distinction between the country’s state-owned enterprises and privately owned companies that is far from reality, according to the opinion piece https://www.wsj.com/articles/blackrock-larry-fink-china-hkex-sse-authoritarianism-xi-jinping-term-limits-human-rights-ant-didi-global-national-security-11630938728.
BlackRock did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
Investors in China have been rattled by a flurry of regulatory crackdowns this year targeting sectors ranging from technology to private tutoring, which have wiped out close to $1 trillion in market value since February.
(Reporting by Aakriti Bhalla in Bengaluru; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta and Kim Coghill)
