HONG KONG â€" BlackRock, the world’s largest asset-management company, said on Monday that it had hired Helen Zhu as a managing director and head of its China equities business.
Ms. Zhu was most recently a managing director and the chief China equity strategist at Goldman Sachs in Hong Kong, where she worked for the past eight years. Before Goldman, Ms. Zhu worked for five years as a telecommunications industry analysts at ABN Amro in Hong Kong.
Foreign investment firms like BlackRock, which had $4.3 trillion in assets under management at the end of December, are still heavily restricted in their ability to invest in China’s domestic markets.
However, although the details remain to be seen, the Chinese government under President Xi Jinping has pledged financial overhauls that would give foreign investors greater access to China’s equity and debt markets and would make it easier for Chinese to invest in overseas assets.
“Helen’s appointment continues a series of senior hires adding to a talented team,†Andrew Swan, head of Asian equities at BlackRock, said in a news release. “Her insight into China’s financial markets, built from a decade of bottom-up China equity research experience and additional China macro strategy expertise, will further enhance the team’s investment capabilities.â€
