Seeing Zhuhai as an important node city of the Greater Bay Area as the equity investment industry rapidly develops, the city's role took center stage at the 15th China LP/GP Summit here May 20-21.

Equity investment has radically boosted entrepreneurship, innovation, and industrial upgrades locally, Guo Jin, chairman of Huafa Group's Zhuhai Huajin Capital, told the assembly of 400 financial experts. They included 200 limited partners (LPs), 150 general partners (GPs), and leaders of domestically renowned funds, government guidance funds, insurance funds, family funds, venture capital (VC)/private equity (PC) institutions, and listed enterprises.

Speaking at the opening ceremony in the Zhuhai International Convention & Exhibition Center in Shizimen, Guo said his City of Youth & Vigor has seen the population grow by 56.36 percent over the past decade. He noted such rapid development encourages local districts to set up industrial investment funds and wants State-owned enterprises to create equity investment businesses. A stereo system of industrial, VC, and angel funds has been established by municipal and district governments and State-owned enterprises. 

Roundtable discussion [Photo by Guan Mingrong / Nanfangplus]

Zhuhai established the first municipal State-owned sci-tech venture capital platform -- Zhuhai Science & Technology VC -- in 2015 and added the Zhuhai Development & Investment Fund -- a government mother fund with a scale of 100 billion yuan ($15 billion) -- in 2017.

Zhuhai Huafa Group, a summit co-host, reported that LPGP theme matchmaking focused on current hot tracks such as big health, science and technology, chip semiconductors, early investment, and more, and invited active LPs in the market to sit on the same field as excellent GPs.

Unprecedented investment enthusiasm from the second half of 2020 to date has led to new State-owned assets and VC/PC heavyweights, said Ni Zhengdong of Zero2IPO Ventures, a co-host. Investment by State-owned institutions accounted for 34.3 percent of the market in 2020, and equity investment by State-owned IPs in Renminbi funds now exceeds 70 percent.   

Ni cited four changes in LP development trends in 2021: the exploration of LPs in multi-asset allocation, a window period of secondary fund trading, impetus of financial institutions to expand the equity investment market, and further use of guidance funds to balance policy guidance with market operation.

The list of top 100 Chinese investors in 2021 was released at the opening. Held, meanwhile, were a GP fundraising roadshow, themed LP/GP matchmaking conference, forum, special conference for LP, and themed LP training session.

The summit was also hosted by PEdaily.