We examine the industrial organization and institutional development of the asset
management industry in Asian developing economies specifically in China, Indonesia,
Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines and Thailand. We focus on the size and growth
of the buy-side of the respective financial markets, asset allocation, the regulatory
environment, and the state of internationalization of the fund management industry in its key components  mutual funds, pension funds and asset management for high net worth individuals. We link these the evolution of professional asset management in
these environments to the development of the respective capital markets and to the evolution of corporate governance. We find that the fund management industry occupies a very small niche in domestic financial systems that are dominated by banks.
At the same time, we find that its growth has been very rapid in the early 2000s and we
suggest that this is likely to persist as the demand for professional management of financial wealth in the region develops and as the pension fund sectors of the respective
economies are liberalized to allow larger portions of assets to be invested in collective investment schemes.