So far, a handful of Chinese fund management companies have received preliminary clearance to sell products holding overseas stocks to mainland Chinese investors.

Fortis Haitong Investment Management — a Chinese fund management joint venture co-owned by Belgian-Dutch financial services group Fortis — is among the first batch and expects its maiden Qualified Domestic Institutional Investor (QDII) fund to hold assets of at least US$500 million, Tian Rencan, the JV’s chief executive, said at the China Century Summit.

Personal wealth is growing on the back of China’s breakneck economic growth, and Shanghai Pudong Development Bank is gearing up by doubling its outlets to meet rising demand for wealth management services, the bank’s president told the China Century Summit.

Pudong Bank, a local partner of Citigroup Inc, hopes the proportion of its assets from the retail banking business will rise to 35 percent by 2010 from 15 percent now, Fu Jianhua, vice chairman and president of the Chinese bank, said.

JPMorgan’s China asset management venture is considering raising $1 billion-$2 billion for its first overseas investment fund — a product key for the firm to diversify its business risks, the venture’s Chief Executive Mandy Wang said at the China Century Summit.

China International Fund Management Co — which manages more than 70 billion yuan from more than three million customers — won official approval early last month to launch the fund under China’s Qualified Domestic Institutional Investor (QDII) scheme, a programme aimed at easing the upward pressure on the country’s currency.

 The Chinese party, with a small p, is just getting going. That is the stock market view from Yang Liu, the high-profile fund manager and chairwoman of Atlantis Investment Management, which manages $4 billion of Chinese assets. Buoyed by steep earnings growth and an appreciating yuan currency, the China Enterprises index of H shares, or Hong Kong-listed shares in mainland companies, should “challenge the 20,000″ point level next year — that’s a 37 percent jump. And the Shanghai Composite Index, which has doubled in value this year, will rise at least another 10 percent over the next four months, she believes. For her view on the market, including the sectors to buy, click here.

 Chinese clients are eager to expand outside the world’s fastest-growing major economy and Ernst & Young is planning a near four-fold jump in its China staff over the next decade to meet that demand, said Chief Executive James Turley.

The firm, one of the world’s “Big Four” auditing firms, also plans to open two to three new branches annually over the next few years, focusing expansion in western China to support Beijing’s “Go West” economic policy, Turley told the Reuters China Century Summit on a visit to Shanghai, China’s financial hub.

Competition for accounting talent among the four major accounting firms in China is fierce, with many CEOs of foreign companies complaining that it is difficult to find enough qualified financial experts as they expand their business in China.

German industrial conglomerate ThyssenKrupp expects to maintain its average annual sales growth rate of roughly 10 percent in China over the next three to five years, its China chief said at the Reuters China Century Summit.

Sales in China, its largest market in Asia, are estimated to top 1 billion euros ($1.36 billion) in the current fiscal year, up from 955 million euros a year earlier, Alfred Wewers, president and chief executive officer of ThyssenKrupp’s China operations.

Buyout firm MBK Partners sees ample investment opportunities in domestically focused Chinese consumer and industrial firms as the world’s fourth-biggest economy gets richer, Kuo-Chuan Kung, MBK Partners’ head for Greater China, said at the Reuters China Century Summit.

But asset prices are also expected to rise amid fierce competition and a soaring local stock market, he added.

North Asia-focused MBK also expects more private equity-invested companies to exit through IPOs on China’s surging local bourses as Beijing looks to mop up excess market liquidity.

Click below to hear Kung’s views on the changing nature of foreign capital flows into China:

http://int1.fp.sandpiper.net/reuters/edi torial/images/20070904/MBK.mp3

Starbucks Corp, the world’s biggest coffee-shop chain, plans to source coffee from China for the first time as it expands in a country with more than 5,000 years of tea-drinking culture, its country head said at the Reuters China Century Summit.

Starbucks has been working with coffee farmers in China’s southwest to help them meet sourcing standards and has sent coffee shipments to the United States for testing, Starbucks, China President Wang Jinlong said.

Click below to hear Wang’s views on how China’s economic growth is changing consumer tastes:

http://int1.fp.sandpiper.net/reuters/edi torial/images/20070904/starbucks.mp3