Following the concentrated resignation from multiple products, there has been new developments regarding the destination of Yang Siliang, a fund manager overseeing tens of billions in assets and former star performer at Baoying Fund. According to filing information from the Asset Management Association of China (AMAC), Yang Siliang left Baoying Fund at the end of August and recently joined top-tier firm E Fund Management.
What appears to be a routine talent movement has once again thrust Baoying Fund into the spotlight. This veteran fund company, established 24 years ago, has been dubbed the "Whampoa Military Academy of Shenzhen's public funds." Over the past decade, it has produced a batch of renowned fund managers including Wang Ruyuan, Yang Kai, Peng Gan, Xiao Xiao, Chen Jinwei, and Yang Siliang, yet has watched them successively move to other platforms.
The coexistence of the "Whampoa Military Academy" halo with the embarrassment of being a "talent transit station" reflects the collective anxiety of small and medium-sized public fund companies under the Matthew effect: when platforms, incentives, and resources are comprehensively outmatched by top-tier companies, what can they rely on to retain talent?
Recent updates to AMAC's practitioner filing information show that Yang Siliang's employing institution has changed to E Fund Management, which doesn't seem to surprise the public fund industry. This former Baoying Fund star manager intensively resigned from his positions as fund manager of five products in August, including Baoying Advantage Industry Mixed Fund and Baoying Value Growth, making his departure signal clear.
Yang Siliang's association with Baoying Fund began in April 2015. Having just left Dacheng Fund, he joined Baoying starting as a researcher and gradually grew into an investment research backbone capable of independent responsibility. In 2018, Yang Siliang officially began his fund manager career, taking over Baoying Ruifeng Innovation and Baoying Consumer Theme, with the latter becoming one of his signature works, achieving a tenure return of 156.84% and an annualized return of 14.76%. In April 2020, he took charge of another future signature work, Baoying New Value, which also achieved a tenure return of 89.47% and an annualized return of 12.77%, ranking in the top 10% of similar products.
In the view of many industry professionals, Yang Siliang is a Growth at a Reasonable Price (GARP) style player with macro perspective and absolute return concepts. Through precise grasp of industries and trends, his assets under management exceeded the 10 billion yuan threshold in mid-2024, making him Baoying Fund's only equity fund manager overseeing tens of billions.
The departure of such a high-performing fund manager is undoubtedly a significant loss for Baoying.
As a veteran fund company established over 20 years ago, Baoying Fund's shareholders are China Railway Trust (75% stake) under China Railway Group and China Foreign Economic and Trade Trust (25% stake). Looking at the company's development history, Baoying Fund has cultivated and supplied a large number of talents to the industry.
At the end of 2010, Wang Qin, known as a "fund powerhouse," became general manager of Baoying Fund, introducing a group of young fund managers who later gained considerable fame, and Baoying Fund entered its golden age. In 2013, Wang Ruyuan, dubbed the "public fund queen," rose to prominence with Baoying Core Advantage, winning the mixed fund championship with a 56.4% return rate. Subsequently, the "Four Young Dragons" - Yang Kai, Peng Gan, Zhang Xiaoren, and Gai Junlong - took turns making headlines, pushing the company's active equity scale from less than 10 billion to nearly 50 billion at its peak. After this, Baoying Fund also produced the "Five Young Dragons" including renowned fund managers Xiao Xiao, Li Jin, Zhang Zhongwei, Hao Miao, and Li Jianwei, with Yang Siliang's rise viewed as a continuation of this glory.
Why could Baoying Fund produce systematic legions of fund managers and high-performing products? According to multiple industry professionals, this is closely related to the company's strategic direction, institutional design, and corporate culture. On one hand, as one of the earliest established fund companies in the industry, Baoying Fund has long regarded active investment capability as its core competency, deeply cultivating active management while encouraging diversified investment styles and building multi-style, multi-strategy investment research systems to lay the foundation for talent development. On the other hand, from the growth paths of these high-performing fund managers, most started as researchers accumulating experience with solid foundations before moving to the front to manage funds, all indicating that Baoying Fund's internal investment research and cultivation system has been implemented effectively.
However, the flip side of the halo is "inability to retain talent." Wang Ruyuan left public funds for private in 2014, founding Hongliu Investment; Peng Gan jumped to Dongwu Fund in 2016 and later left the public fund industry; Zhang Xiaoren, Gai Junlong, and others also successively left around 2017. Yang Siliang, having progressed step by step from researcher to fund manager assistant to a star manager overseeing tens of billions, has now also turned to leave. For Baoying Fund, the "cultivation-loss" cycle seems to have become commonplace.
Looking at a longer time frame, Baoying Fund's talent loss problem has already shown normalized and core trends. According to Wind data statistics, from 2019 to September 10 this year, Baoying Fund has had 17 fund managers leave cumulatively, with 70% having served as fund managers for over 5 years, and veteran professionals like Deng Dong serving as fund managers for over 10 years. Meanwhile, 9 of these 17 people had tenure at Baoying Fund exceeding 3 years, with 6 exceeding 5 years, representing core investment research forces deeply cultivated by the company.
Looking at where these fund managers went after leaving, among those with available Wind data, most went to top-tier industry funds. Zhang Zhongwei joined Invesco Great Wall in 2023, Chen Jinwei joined Penghua Fund in the same period, and Ji Xiang joined China Europe Fund this year. A minority chose individual-based funds or newly established companies in recent years, while the previously popular "going private" route was not mainstream, also demonstrating that the "Whampoa Military Academy" reputation of public funds is not undeserved.
However, Baoying's shareholders may also question why Baoying Fund cannot retain these star performers. Incentive mechanisms may be the core factor. If this link is not resolved, it will be difficult to reverse Baoying's talent decline.
For example, there were market rumors earlier this year that a fund manager at Baoying Fund received only 100,000 yuan in pre-tax year-end bonus during a year of outstanding performance, revealing the compensation level of core investment research personnel. "Poor performance is definitely unacceptable, but good performance also lacks incentive mechanisms, so you can't blame people for 'moving to higher ground.'"
The impact of core investment research talent loss is directly reflected in management scale fluctuations. In fact, Baoying Fund once had glorious moments, with management scale approaching 80 billion yuan and industry ranking 28th just four years after establishment, far exceeding many well-known companies.
However, in the following years, Baoying Fund's management scale experienced consecutive declines, falling to just over 20 billion yuan by mid-2019, shrinking more than 70% from its peak. In recent years, the company's scale has recovered somewhat, once increasing to over 80 billion yuan, but failed to maintain the upward momentum and began "rising and falling back." As of mid-this year, Baoying Fund's latest management scale was 73.293 billion yuan, actually declining compared to 2015, with rankings falling to 73rd position, contrasting sharply with the industry's overall rapid development.
A more severe challenge may be the "talent gap." Wind data shows that as of September 10, among Baoying Fund's 18 active fund managers, half have tenure of less than 3 years, with 5 having tenure of less than or just reaching 1 year, belonging to novice fund managers. Only 2 fund managers have tenure exceeding 5 years, one being Cai Dan, general manager of the quantitative investment department, and the other being Lu Shuyi, who focuses on fixed income products. The current situation of inadequate succession in active equity fields puts Baoying's investment research inheritance to the test.
From this perspective, the reason why small and medium-sized fund companies including Baoying Fund fall into the predicament of "able to cultivate but unable to retain" is essentially the result of internal mechanism shortcomings combined with external industry environment changes. Internally, insufficient incentive mechanisms and platform resource limitations are the two core reasons leading to core talent loss.
For example, regarding incentive mechanisms, the gap between small and medium-sized fund companies and top-tier public funds is particularly evident. Public fund professionals told reporters that top-tier public funds have more flexible compensation systems for core fund managers, allowing core investment research personnel to share in company development results. But small and medium-sized fund companies find this very difficult to achieve.
Besides compensation, platform resource limitations have also become an important reason for core talent departure. Paipai Wealth's public fund product operations manager Zeng Fangfang analyzed that generally speaking, top-tier platforms possess stronger research resources, data support, and broader research coverage, providing more comprehensive research support for fund managers. Meanwhile, the brand influence of top-tier platforms helps attract more capital and clients, providing fund managers with broader development space and more investment opportunities.
For example, in investment research support, many small and medium-sized fund companies' research teams are only 1/3 to 1/4 the size of top-tier companies, with limited industry coverage, making it difficult to meet fund managers' research needs for subdivided sectors. Often they can only rely on external reports, "which greatly affects fund managers' investment decisions."
In terms of channel resources, small and medium-sized fund companies' product issuance capabilities are far inferior to top-tier public funds. Taking Baoying as an example, Wind data shows that from 2021 to the end of June this year, Baoying Fund cumulatively issued 23 new funds (different share classes combined), with an average initial fundraising scale of only 718 million yuan, with over half having initial fundraising scales under 500 million yuan. During the same period, another top-tier fund issued over 240 new funds, with 112 excluding ETFs, achieving an average initial fundraising scale of 2 billion yuan, with 14 funds having initial fundraising scales exceeding 5 billion yuan. The scarcity of channel resources not only limits fund managers' management scale growth but also affects their career development space.
From the external environment perspective, the intensification of the Matthew effect in the public fund industry has continuously squeezed the survival space of small and medium-sized public funds. As of mid-this year, 8 fund management companies have broken through the trillion yuan management scale threshold, compared to only 1 five years ago. In contrast, nearly 40 companies in the industry still have management scales under 10 billion yuan. Capital concentration has brought resource concentration, enabling top-tier public funds to invest more funds in investment research construction, compensation incentives, and channel expansion, forming a positive cycle of "capital, resources, talent," while small and medium-sized public funds fall into a vicious cycle of "capital outflow, resource reduction, talent loss."
Meanwhile, talent mobility in the public fund industry has become increasingly market-oriented. With the rise of private funds, securities asset management, and bank wealth management subsidiaries, fund managers have more diverse career choices, and core talent's bargaining power has significantly increased. For core talents cultivated by small and medium-sized fund companies, when top-tier public funds or private funds extend olive branches, whether in terms of compensation, platform resources, or career development space, they possess irresistible attraction.
Yingmi Fund Research Institute points out that with the intensification of the public fund industry's top-tier and concentration trends, top-tier fund companies possess large platform effects, making it easier to attract and batch-cultivate excellent fund managers. Long-term accumulated advantages also drive them toward team building development, increasing demand for talent. Meanwhile, more and more fund companies place greater emphasis on team building rather than solely creating star fund managers.
Facing the talent loss problem common among small and medium-sized public funds, the industry continuously has institutions exploring breakthrough strategies. For example, some companies previously piloted business division system reforms in the industry, giving investment research teams greater autonomy and revenue sharing ratios. Others have expanded equity incentive coverage, deeply binding core investment research personnel's interests with the company's long-term development. Additionally, as Zeng Fangfang mentioned, small and medium-sized public funds can focus on specific fields or investment strategies, building characteristic business brands to attract excellent talents with relevant professional backgrounds and interests.
Competition in the public fund industry ultimately comes down to talent competition. For small and medium-sized public funds, whether they can retain core talent not only relates to their own survival and development but also affects the ecological balance of the entire public fund industry. From "cultivating talent" to "retaining talent," Baoying Fund still has a long way to go, and this is also a challenge that all small and medium-sized public fund companies need to face together.