On 28 November, Joao Ma, chairman of Leader Fund Shareholding Management Limited, delivered a keynote speech titled “Missions and Actions of Macao Private Equity Managers” at the International Finance and Investment Cooperation Forum of the Asia Youth Leaders Forum 2021.

The full speech is as below.

Distinguished guests, dignitaries, and friends,

I'm from Macao. When I was preparing for the speech this morning, I was thinking about which tie to wear. I picked the one I wore in high school. Why? Because our company was founded in 2019. We are a new company. Different from many companies with a long history here, our company is still very young, as we have only just started our business as a private equity fund company in Macao. In 2018, the measures for foreign-funded equity investment were introduced to support enterprises in Macao to set up private equity funds in Hengqin. So, in 2019, we established Leader Fund. It was until the registration process that we realized three practitioners were needed. I had no other choice but to move ahead. I took part in the qualification exam and passed. Then we set up the company. Time was pressing, but with the country's support, we completed the QFLP registration in October with little hitches. It took a long time, but we succeeded in launching the project.

Our company was established with a few missions. The first is to facilitate the development of the Greater Bay Area. We expect to introduce better funds into the Greater Bay Area through Hengqin. The second is to support young people living in the Greater Bay Area and elsewhere in China who come from Macao or return from abroad so that they can enjoy better development in the country. The third is to introduce some overseas funds into China through us as a QFLP.

We were actually discussing cooperation with Hong Kong, but due to the pandemic, that was suspended. However, we are still in contact. In fact, we can also introduce some funds from Taiwan – and even from Southeast Asia – through this platform. We have not invested in many projects, but some projects in the Greater Bay Area, such as Pachira. It is a company founded by some Macao people who came back from the Silicon Valley, engaging mainly in technology such as AI systems, a bit like iFlytek. It develops well too. The government of Macao and many private companies support this company. It is expected to go public next year. It may be the first Macao enterprise to be listed in Beijing. UNIBROWN Coffee, another company we invest in, is also a company out of youth entrepreneurship. We have invested in a chip company and a high-tech company engaging in nanotechnology as well. We choose carefully the companies we invest in. Because we are a young company, we mainly choose companies that may produce revenue within two or three years. We hope there are Macao elements in the companies too, and we can support their development in the mainland. There are two focuses for our future development.

First of all, the market in Macao. This market is young. Many Macao people haven't been much exposed to fund investment before. They used to be engaged in traditional industries such as bond investment and stock investment. When we began to contact them, they were still unfamiliar. But when we talked about equity investment with the second and third generations, we discovered that these young people of the second and third generations were very interested and began to invest with us. We have great expectations for fundraising; because although we have not been able to interact with Taiwan and Hong Kong very well at the moment, there are many potential clients. Private equity funds are being discussed in the Legislative Assembly of Macao, so the government of Macao is supportive of private equity funds. In the future, some revenue from some state-owned enterprises may become sources of our funds. We can also use some large state-owned enterprises' revenue as guidance funds. I think the future of this industry is promising in Macao, including the QFLP model. Actually, we are discussing cooperation with clients in Asia. We hope to attract more external funds.

Besides, as our company is young, we know our disadvantages. We hope to find some partners and cooperate with them. On the one hand, we can learn from their experience, because we lack experience. We have not invested a lot. So, we hope to cooperate with some experienced enterprises and funds that have sound judgments. With their experience, we can look for investment projects together and inspire confidence in our clients to invest with us.

The whole of Hengqin used to be our platform. Now that the general plan for building a Guangdong-Macao in-depth cooperation zone in Hengqin has been issued, we will use the zone as our platform. It may be of great help to our company's structure and future development. Simply put, the tax rate for our company may be reduced to 15%, just like how they support Macao companies. As Leader Fund is a Macao-funded company, that policy may facilitate the process of the business registration of Leader Fund and Macao companies in general in Hengqin.

Lastly, I want to emphasize that our company is promising in the context of in-depth Guangdong-Macao cooperation, and I hope you will provide us with more advice. Thank you!