[HONG KONG] JPMorgan Chase is seeing a broad-based recovery in China and growing interest from foreign investors seeking to diversify, as the global tariff regime drives portfolio shifts and fuels an expansion overseas by Chinese firms, according to Rita Chan, co-senior country officer for China.
“The development in the last 12 months have definitely been encouraging,” Chan said in an interview with Bloomberg Television from the lender’s Global China Summit in Shanghai. “We have seen a broad-based recovery in liquidity in volumes.”
Over the past years, the lender has reshuffled leadership and scaled back in China and Hong Kong, acknowledging that the expansion was taking longer than anticipated, even as chief executive officer Jamie Dimon has said he remains committed.
Wall Street firms have overall pulled back from China, with their combined exposure, which includes lending, trading and investments, slumping by about a fifth.
Now there are signs of business picking up, with increased share sales in Hong Kong and mainland China. Chinese leaders have also reiterated commitments to their financial opening and unleashed stimulus to get the economy back on track. Markets have also recovered after Beijing and Washington agreed on a 90-day truce on some of the highest tariffs.
The bank is seeing “very good momentum” and the trend of Chinese local corporate clients going overseas and internationalising hasn’t changed, she said. “The cross-border services that are required to navigate this complicated environment is definitely increasing.”
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JPMorgan has poured significant resources into building out its China business, and is the only Wall Street bank that attained full control of its futures, securities and asset management businesses in China in a short span of three years.
The lender is also bullish on other parts of Asia. Speaking to Bloomberg TV in Shanghai, Sjoerd Leenart, the bank’s Asia-Pacific CEO, said it expects growth in the region to be well above the global average, with “enormous opportunities” in Japan.
In India, “the current leadership is giving investors the confidence that they will continue on the same path”, Leenart said. Still, “there’s a long way to go” as the country’s economy is much smaller than China.
JPMorgan’s Asia-Pacific operations generated US$12 billion in net revenue last year, a 13 per cent increase from 2023.
JPMorgan appointed Chan and Alan Ho, also Asia-Pacific chief financial officer, in April last year to fill the vacancy left by Mark Leung, who resigned as China CEO after a 25-year stint at the firm. BLOOMBERG