Canada’s second-biggest bank is changing the name of its TD Asian Growth Fund to TD China Income & Growth Fund, and narrowing its focus from equity securities of issuers in Asia and Australasia broadly to China exclusively. It’s changing the fund’s benchmark to the Shanghai Shenzhen CSI 300 Index, and its risk rating will go from “medium to high” to “high.” (The Logic)
Talking point: Beijing and Ottawa have been at loggerheads since Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou’s December 2018 arrest, but that isn’t stopping some of Canada’s biggest institutional investors from increasing their focus on China. In March, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board said it was considering opening an office in China as early as 2020. The Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec and the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan have both upped their respective China involvement in recent years. Focusing on the country allows large investors to reduce their dependence on the highly volatile U.S. market and, in some cases, snap up lowered valuations in Chinese equity markets. For example, the Caisse invested $175 million in JD.com in 2012. When the firm went public two years later, Caisse’s stake was worth $630 million.