With four key hires, the global asset manager has its sights on “China’s $12 trillion onshore bond market”, now the third largest globally, said the group’s head of fixed income for Asia.

Four portfolio managers will be added to Aberdeen Standard Investment teams in Shanghai and Hong Kong to help steer investment opportunities.

Edmund Goh joins in Shanghai where he will focus on China sovereign bonds and credit investing. Aaron Ni will join him to cover onshore China credits. Prior to this, Ni specialised in credit analysis at Ping An Asset Management. 

Stella Li completes the Shanghai trio and will focus on China equities. She previously worked as an equity research analyst with Macquarie Securities.

The fourth hire is Alec Jin, who joins the Asian equities team in Hong Kong, where he will cover China and Hong Kong listed stocks. Before this, he was a director at Standard Chartered working on the leveraged finance team. 

The firm said the new hires bring four decades of industry experience to the China investment teams, reminding investors it has been active in China equities since the mid-1980s putting it among the first institutional foreign investors to access the onshore markets.

McCabe said the China expansion is “an important milestone” for the investment firm, which is part of the Scottish-based UK-listed Standard Life Aberdeen. The parent group has $735.5 billion in assets under management worldwide as of June 2018.