The Teacher Retirement System of Texas, the seventh-largest US public pension fund, will invest US$200 million in private equity in Asia, whose economies are leading the world out of a recession.
The Austin, Texas-based fund has assigned US$100 million each to Squadron Capital and Morgan Creek Capital Management LLC to help it invest with private equity firms that focus on emerging Asian economies such as China, spokesman Howard Goldman said in an e-mailed response to questions.
Stock markets in Asia have outperformed the global average this year as China’s and India’s economies rebounded, allowing buyout firms managed by TPG Inc and Goldman Sachs Group Inc to profit by selling private-equity investments.
“Asia will continue to be a growth story and the late entrants will still be able to enjoy that growth,” said Vincent Pun, a principal at Diversus Investment Advisers Pty Ltd, which advises private equity and hedge funds. “It makes sense for Teacher Retirement to invest through funds-of-funds in Asia because they have people on the ground and experience investing in the region.”
The California Public Employees’ Retirement System, the biggest US pension plan; second-ranked California State Teachers’ Retirement System; and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, the country’s second-biggest public-pension manager, have made investments in private equity firms in Asia, Pun said.
Teacher Retirement, manager of more than US$83 billion for almost 1.3 million public education employees and retirees, last month started a US$250 million gold fund investing in precious-metals mining stocks and exchange-traded funds, its Web site said.
Morgan Creek Capital, based in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, manages US$9 billion for institutions and wealthy clients. Squadron Capital is a Hong Kong-based private equity investment firm that manages more than US$1 billion in assets.
Private-equity managers, which use debt to fund acquisitions, announced a record US$1.58 trillion of transactions worldwide from 2005 to 2007, before the credit contraction stalled takeovers and halted sales of companies the firms had prepared for divestment, Bloomberg data indicated.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day