More Information For Hong Kong Investors As Standard & Poor's Launches New Website

by Carla Johnson, Investors Offshore.com

30 May 2001

Leading ratings agency, Standard & Poor's, has launched a website to further enhance its online presence which offers, for the first time, detailed guidelines to the company's rating system, thereby enabling investors to understand more about the definitions of its triple-A ranking process.

Bill Reidy, managing director of fund services for Standard & Poor's Asia-Pacific told the South China Morning Post: 'Mutual funds have always been positioned as a bit of black magic, they had their own vocabulary and they were not particularly well understood. You needed to go to an adviser to understand them.'

He added: 'By surfing through our Web site, you not only get performance data, but you also get news articles and, most importantly, we define terminology.'

Last week, InvestorsOffshore.com reported on the unpopularity of hedge funds and mutual funds among Asian investors when compared to their US and European counterparts. But Mr Reidy is confident that mutual funds in particular will become much more popular investment vehicles for Asian investors and this is down to two determining factors: people in Hong Kong are legally obliged to invest in mutual funds for their retirement thanks to the recently implemented Mandatory Provident Fund and wealth management services are becoming more accessible to middle-class individuals and no longer appear to be the preserve of high net-worth investors.

Mr Reidy says the website, www.funds-sp.com, reflects a gradual turn around in this trend. He stated: 'In looking at the Asian market historically, the investment horizon for most individuals was short term. Also, pension plans were not well-defined. Many of these things are changing as individuals become more sophisticated and as they begin to use more technology in their investment process.'

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