Art gains popularity as passion investment

By Shi Jing in Shanghai (China Daily) Updated: 2013-04-16 07:58

Insights into the alternative investment demands of China's high net worth individuals also help with trends in private banking, said Xue Ruifeng, the general manager of the Private Banking Department of Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Ltd.

"The characteristics of passion investments allow the private banking industry to tailor different packages for various customers, which reflect the personalized asset allocation service concepts of private banking," Xue said.

The report showed that in fine wine investment, the most important consideration was the vintage of the wine (81 percent of respondents), followed by label (77 percent) and region (66 percent).

"It is usually safer that wine investors seek returns two years after the investment," Xue said.

Gu Guang, the founder of Shanghai Wine Exchange, added: "According to our research, the value of wines surges by 90 percent after three years. In this sense, the longer they hold it, the more valuable the wine becomes."

For watch investment, the most important consideration was brand (for 73 percent of respondents), followed by craftsmanship (62 percent) and country of origin (54 percent).

About 16 percent of the dollar millionaires said they plan to charter a private jet within three years.

The recent annual report on China's Commercial Sector (2011-2012) released by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences said that the Chinese private jet market will grow at an average annual rate of 20 percent in the next 10 years, although only about 0.6 percent of the world's total number of private jets are registered in China.

The passion investment report said that the number of dollar millionaires in China grew 4 percent over the past year to 2.8 million individuals.

The number of super-rich Chinese, defined as individuals with a personal wealth of 100 million yuan, grew 2 percent to 64,500 individuals, the slowest growth in the past four years.