Early morning announcement: new moves of renowned fund managers

Behind the collective "burden reduction" of well-known fund managers, the logic of the public fund industry's investment research teams has changed

Renowned fund manager Zhang Kun has made new moves again.

On the early morning of September 30, E Fund Management announced in an announcement that due to work requirements, Zhang Kun has stepped down as the fund manager of E Fund High-Quality Enterprise 3-Year Holding Fund, and the product will be independently managed by Zhang Qi. On June 27 this year, E Fund High-Quality Enterprise 3-Year Holding Fund added Zhang Qi as a co-fund manager. After a 3-month co-management transition period, the handover has been completed this time.

New Generation Fund Managers Take Over the Baton

Zhang Qi, who takes over the management this time, is a new-generation fund manager who grew up independently within E Fund's internal system. He holds a doctorate in engineering and has solid scientific research capabilities in science and engineering. Since joining E Fund in 2017, he has successively served as an industry researcher and investment manager, experienced multiple post trainings, and officially took the position of fund manager in April 2022.

At the level of investment methodology, Zhang Qi's idea, which focuses more on industrial opportunities brought by technological iteration and social reform, complements Zhang Kun's in-depth exploration of high-quality value blue chips. Zhang Qi is used to examining the context of industrial development from a top-down global perspective, prefers to select growth-oriented enterprises that can survive fluctuations in industry cycles and continuously raise their profit centers, and captures the investment dividends brought by enterprise growth relying on in-depth industrial research.

At present, Zhang Qi manages a total of 5 public fund products, namely E Fund Strategy Growth, E Fund Strategy No.2, E Fund Innovation Growth, E Fund High-Quality Enterprise 3-Year Holding Fund, and the newly issued E Fund Beijing Stock Exchange Preferred 3-Month Holding Fund, with a total management scale of 10.768 billion yuan, and the best return on tenure reaches 110.53%. The management capability of the new-generation fund manager is being continuously released.

During the co-management period, the position adjustment of E Fund High-Quality Enterprise 3-Year Holding Fund demonstrated Zhang Qi's investment logic. The 2026 mid-year fund report shows that after the team co-management mode was launched in the first half of this year, the fund started to optimize its portfolio structure, increased the allocation of high-growth technology sectors such as electronics and communications, moderately reduced the positions of traditional heavy-weight industries such as food & beverage and pharmaceuticals, making the industry distribution of the portfolio more diversified and the weight of growth style increased significantly.

The two fund managers reached a consensus on the market's macro judgment. In the second half market outlook section of the semi-annual report, Zhang Kun and Zhang Qi jointly wrote the core judgment on the market: on the one hand, they continue to be optimistic about the consumer sector, and the smooth repair of the consumption cycle is a crucial part of the economic recovery process; on the other hand, the development trend of China and the United States' artificial intelligence industry is the core variable that the market needs to continuously track next. The iteration of artificial intelligence models and investment in the hardware end have evolved into important macro factors, whose development will not only reshape the technology track, but also have a far-reaching impact on the entire industrial chain.

Specifically for the investment layout in the second half of the year, the team anchors three core observation dimensions: First, whether the iteration of artificial intelligence model technology can continuously land in new application scenarios, and how much incremental revenue the commercialization implementation can bring; Second, the competition pattern between Chinese and American AI models, the rapid rise of domestic open source model capabilities with prominent cost-effectiveness advantages, has formed a complete set of industrial solutions with local hardware, which will rewrite the domestic industrial competition pattern; Third, many governments around the world have increased support and guidance for the technology industry. Industry resource allocation cannot only focus on the natural evolution of the industry, and external policy forces are also key factors that cannot be ignored in investment.

Judging from the adjustment of co-managed products, E Fund High-Quality Enterprise 3-Year Holding Fund retains its attention to the fundamentals of consumption and fully embraces the opportunities brought by the transformation of the technology industry, reflecting the integration of investment research forces during the co-management stage. As Zhang Qi takes over the product independently, it is expected that the technology content of this fund's positions will be further improved.

The "Burden Reduction" Path of Renowned Fund Managers

This is not the first time Zhang Kun has "handed over the baton" this year. On May 22, E Fund Blue Chip Select added He Yicheng and Yang Siliang as co-managers; on June 27, E Fund High-Quality Select added Peng Ke as co-manager. In May 2025, Zhang Kun stepped down as deputy general manager, marking that he broke away from the industry convention of "excellent investment performers moving to management positions" and returned to his post as a fund manager. A series of actions point to the same direction: well-known fund managers in the industry are experiencing a systematic "burden reduction".

On September 18, Invesco Great Wall Fund announced that due to work adjustment, Liu Yanchun no longer serves as deputy general manager and will focus on investment management. Since the beginning of this year, multiple products under Liu Yanchun have added co-fund managers, forming a pattern of "4 co-managed funds + 2 independently managed funds" among the 6 funds under his management.

Stepping down from management positions and adding co-fund managers to manage products has become a common trend for well-known fund managers in the industry. Since 2024, many senior executive-level fund managers have chosen to step down from management positions such as deputy general manager or even general manager to focus on fund investment, such as Zhang Kun, Chen Hao and Xiao Nan from E Fund, Huang Hai and Qiao Liang from Wanjia Asset Management, Chen Guangming from Ruiyuan Fund, Feng Mingyuan from Xinyuan Aoya Fund, Yang Gu from Nuoan Fund, Guo Kun from Changsheng Fund and so on.

Behind the adjustment of well-known fund managers is the switch of investment research logic in the public fund industry. In May 2025, the China Securities Regulatory Commission issued the Action Plan for Promoting the High-Quality Development of Publicly Offered Funds, which clearly proposed to "strengthen the construction of core investment research capabilities", accelerate the construction of a "platform-based, integrated, multi-strategy" investment research system, and support the team-based management mode for fund managers. Under the policy orientation, the past model that relied on the personal IP of a few star fund managers is being replaced by a team-based investment research system. For fund holders, this also means that the performance of products will no longer be tied to one individual, but rely on more sustainable team collaboration and institutional guarantees.

This article is from the WeChat Official Account "China Fund News" (ID: chinafundnews), the author is Yan Jun, and it is published with authorization from 36Kr.