Soros Fund Management says it is not putting money into China

[NEW YORK] Soros Fund Management is steering clear of investing in China, said Dawn Fitzpatrick, the firm's chief investment officer.

"We are not putting money into China right now," she said in an interview with Erik Schatzker at the Bloomberg Invest virtual conference on Tuesday.

She said investors need to be "really careful" about putting cash into US-China listings.

Investors began questioning the viability of investing in China after the government began clamping down on industries ranging from tech to online education. George Soros has criticised President Xi Jinping's policies and said in a Wall Street Journal op-ed last month that "pouring billions of dollars into China now is a tragic mistake". Fitzpatrick said investors have been caught by surprise by what China is doing and the extent of economic damage the government is willing to tolerate for its plan.

Chinese companies currently traded in the US will largely have to delist and move to Hong Kong, she said. It will be "a while" before early-stage venture companies in China have an avenue to go public, she added.

As a result, though some big names might go public near-term in Hong Kong, overall, the path from private to public in China is going to take longer. "For 20 years, Chinese tech companies having Western capital and a Western vested interest in their success very much suited China's goals. They don't need that anymore, so they can take their US$700 billion and take it back onshore into Hong Kong - and I think that's what they're going to do," Fitzpatrick said.

She has been at the helm of the US$27 billion fund for four years. Almost all the money she oversees is on behalf of the Open Society Foundations, the philanthropy Soros uses to promote democracy, equality and human rights.

BLOOMBERG