Noah Holdings, one of China’s largest asset managers, is expanding its Asia-Pacific operations to meet the growing demand from its wealthy Chinese clients who want to invest globally. The move entails boosting its Hong Kong office and opening one in Japan, according to a top executive.

The Shanghai-headquartered money manager recently renewed and expanded its Hong Kong office by a third to 30,000 sq feet in Times Square, Causeway Bay, a tourist hotspot.

The extra space is needed to accommodate another 10 to 15 per cent of staff the company plans to hire soon, said Grant Pan Qing, group CFO and CEO of Noah’s Hong Kong office.

“Hong Kong is crucial to Noah’s globalisation plans. Many of our customers continue to say that their first stop in the journey is Hong Kong,” Pan said in an interview with the Post.

“Seventy per cent of Noah’s clients are private entrepreneurs – manufacturers, importers and exporters – who have grown their businesses over the past four decades riding on China’s economic reform.”

Founded in 2005, Noah listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2010 and in Hong Kong in 2022. The wealth management firm had 153.3 billion yuan (US$21.2 billion) of assets under management as of March, predominantly serving high-net-worth Chinese-speaking customers worldwide.

It has more than 1,100 relationship managers serving 450,000 clients, offering them investments in private equity, stocks and real estate among others.

“Many of them want to diversify their business operations and expand their investments worldwide,” Pan said. “Hong Kong, an international financial centre with a big pool of financial and other professional talents, is an ideal place for our clients to use as a launch pad.”

Besides expanding the Hong Kong office, Noah is in the process of setting up a base in Tokyo. The firm has operations in major mainland cities, as well as New York, Los Angeles and Singapore.

“Many of our mainland clients have told us that they have operations or some investments in Japan, which is why we need people on-site in Japan to serve them,” Pan said, adding the new office could serve to attract Japanese customers.

In 2023, China was Japan’s largest trading partner, while Japan was China’s second-largest after the US, according to data from Japan’s finance ministry.

China had the highest number of overseas companies in Japan at 31,324 as of October 2022, according to the latest available data on the Japanese foreign ministry website. About 2.4 million Chinese tourists visited Japan last year, a 12-fold increase from a year earlier, but short of the 9.6 million recorded in the pre-Covid era in 2019.

Pan said some clients have also set their sights on Dubai, which could be Noah’s next stop in its expansion plans. But the firm has not yet decided if it needs an office in the Middle East.

Pan said wealthy investors from mainland China have become discerning in recent years, opting for diversification instead of chasing high returns.

“We arrange many seminars and events to encourage our clients to understand the benefits of diversification and the risk levels of various products in terms of geographic exposure and asset classes.”

On the Hong Kong government’s measures to promote the city as a wealth management and family office centre, Pan believes the city has great potential because of the large pool of financial experts who can speak Mandarin, and its proximity to the mainland.

“When a mainland client appoints someone to invest millions of dollars for them, they want someone trustworthy, someone who can speak their language,” he said. “We also make sure each relationship manager serves only a handful of clients so that they can offer personal services to them.”