On September 30, E Fund announced that Zhang Kun would step down as fund manager of E Fund Quality Enterprise Three-Year Holding Mixed Fund due to work needs, with the product to be managed solely by Zhang Qi; Zhang Kun's other managed funds remain unchanged, and he continues to serve as Senior Managing Director and member of the Equity Investment Decision Committee at E Fund.

This change of fund manager was not sudden. On June 27 this year, E Fund Quality Enterprise Three-Year Holding had already added Zhang Qi to co-manage the fund alongside Zhang Kun, completing the handover after a three-month co-management transition. Records show that E Fund Quality Enterprise Three-Year Holding was established in June 2020, with its peak scale once reaching 10.805 billion yuan, making it one of the most closely watched three-year holding period products on the market that year.

However, affected by market volatility and net value drawdowns, as of the end of the second quarter this year, the fund's scale had dropped to 1.49 billion yuan; as of September 29, the fund's return since inception was -26.93%, and its year-to-date return was -24.55%.

Zhang Kun's managed funds have already undergone three fund manager changes during the year. Specifically, on May 23 this year, E Fund Blue Chip Select added He Yicheng and Yang Siliang as co-managers; on June 27, E Fund Quality Select added Peng Ke as co-manager, and E Fund Quality Enterprise Three-Year Holding added Zhang Qi as co-manager.

After this departure, Zhang Kun still manages three products: E Fund Blue Chip Select, E Fund Quality Select, and E Fund Asia Select, among which only E Fund Asia Select is solely managed by Zhang Kun. Wind data shows that as of the end of the second quarter this year, Zhang Kun's assets under management were 32.285 billion yuan; after this departure, his latest assets under management dropped to 30.794 billion yuan, a significant decline from the peak of 134.478 billion yuan at the end of the second quarter of 2021.

Records show that Zhang Qi, who takes over management of E Fund Quality Enterprise Three-Year Holding, joined E Fund in 2017 and became a public fund manager in 2022. He is a growth-style fund manager cultivated internally by E Fund, currently managing E Fund Quality Enterprise Three-Year Holding, E Fund Strategic Growth, E Fund Strategic Growth No. 2, E Fund Innovation Growth, and other products, with latest assets under management of 10.768 billion yuan.

Unlike Zhang Kun's approach that emphasizes long-term value blue chips, Zhang Qi pays more attention to the artificial intelligence-related technology sector and prefers to seek out growth-oriented companies. According to the fund's semi-annual report, E Fund Quality Enterprise Three-Year Holding began to be jointly managed by a team in the first half of the year, adjusting its structure by increasing allocations to sectors such as electronics and communications while reducing allocations to sectors such as food and beverages and pharmaceuticals.

From the perspective of the public fund industry's development, having well-known fund managers add other fund managers to co-manage their products and eventually step down to hand over management to other fund managers is becoming an industry norm. Moving away from reliance on individual star fund managers is not only an industry consensus but also a continuously reiterated requirement from regulators.

The Asset Management Association of China stated in a document in August this year that it is necessary to vigorously develop "platform-based, integrated, multi-strategy" core investment research capabilities and break away from dependence on "blockbuster funds" and "star fund managers." Industry insiders believe that after this fund manager change, the subsequent investment style, position adjustment pace, and performance of the related products are still worth continued attention.