Bloomberg
Global asset management giants are being squeezed out in the race for a piece of a US$300 billion retail investment boom in Taiwan, surpassed by nimbler domestic competitors with massive brokerage networks.As a retail investing frenzy has gripped the island, firms such as BlackRock Inc and JPMorgan Chase & Co are discovering that global scale counts for little against a localized winning formula: a heavy bet on domestic tech.Wall Street’s heavyweights are losing ground across key metrics, including new fund sales, asset growth and trading volume, as mom-and-pop investors bypass international products to chase surging local shares like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電) and MediaTek Inc (聯發科).
The Wall Street sign outside the New York Stock Exchange building is pictured in New York City on March 11 last year.
Onshore brokerages remain the primary gateway to Taiwan’s retail wealth, where local fund houses have long-standing relationships that global firms struggle to replicate. Local peers have embraced high-frequency marketing tactics tailored to local sentiment. In contrast, global firms, often bound by stricter compliance frameworks, tend to shy away from such high-touch retail campaigns.“They are arriving late, still figuring it out while local funds already have brands, distributions and know Taiwan,” Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Rebecca Sin said. “Flows are becoming increasingly zero-sum as investor penetration nears saturation.”
