Tembusu, Cheng, Yu launch $100m China Media Fund

China’s Bona Film Group chairman Yu Dong, Singaporean private equity fund Tembusu Partners and local media entrepreneur Calvin Cheng have signed a memorandum of understanding for a $100m (SG$130m) China media fund, launched at the Singapore Media Festival today.

To be based in Singapore, the private equity fund is touted as “the first such non-Reminbi dominated fund to invest in China’s media and entertainment industry.”

“Singapore is the perfect place to launch this fund as it is not only a financial capital of the world, but also as the place where East meets West. This fund will allow foreign investors to participate in the fastest growing media and entertainment market in the world,” said Yu.

The $100m fund is a five-year closed-end private equity fund targeting for investment media companies, content and technologies. It will be formalized on March 31, 2015. NASDAQ-listed Bona Film Group and Thailand’s Chia Tai Group are likely to be anchor investors.

Yu added, “China’s media and entertainment industry is forecast to overtake Japan’s by 2018, and become the second-largest in the world, behind only the US. It is already the second-largest film market in the world, and China’s TV industry is set to surpass the UK and Germany by 2016 to also become the second-largest behind the UK. This phenomenal growth in China will create many exciting investment opportunities.”

Having put the deal together, Cheng said, “The existing film and TV co-production agreement between Singapore and China opens up opportunities for the fund to invest in projects that involve Singapore-based media companies. In addition, we will be looking at media companies globally that have a ‘China-story’. With the convergence of traditional media with the internet, there will be many exciting new opportunities that will emerge from the vast Chinese landscape, and we will be looking to invest in the best of them.”

A former Singapore parliamentarian and current member of the Singapore Media Festival advisory board, Cheng is executive director and co-founder of Lumina-Looque International, an integrated media company with offices in Singapore, Malaysia and China with holdings in event management, modeling and publishing.