China Dominates Hong Kong Meeting

The announced purpose of last week’s gathering of private equity investors in Asia was to discuss a return to normal after successive waves of recession, the SARS epidemic and war have taken their toll on the Asian PE market. Holding such a meeting in Hong Kong, however, meant that most of the speakers kept looking over their shoulder at China, which has come to dominate private equity investing in Asia.

Conference organizer, Dan Schwartz, publisher of Asian Venture Capital Journal, says that private equity funds in Asia, having fallen precipitously from $94 billion in 2001 to $9.11 billion in 2002, are on the rise once again, with $6.16 billion in new private equity having been raised in the first six months of 2003.