Hillhouse Capital Raises Asia’s Largest Private Equity Fund

On Wednesday, Chinese investment firm Hillhouse Capital closed a USD 10.6 billion funding round from undisclosed investors, the largest private equity capital raising in Asia so far, reports Reuters. Its portfolio companies include several Chinese tech giants like Tencent (腾讯) and Baidu (百度).

The company will use the funds to look for investment opportunities across the healthcare, consumer, technology and services sectors across the world, with a focus on Asia, the company said.

Many companies that Hillhouse invests in regard it as a partner who grows with them. Clarifying further, Zhang Lei, the founder of the company, said, "We are entrepreneurs. We just happen to invest."

In an interview to Financial Times, Lei said that he takes pride in the fact that most of his investments are actually endowment funds from Yale and other universities.

Zhang Lei once persuaded Tencent to invest in JD.com (京东), instead of developing its own e-commerce business. He again persuaded the giants on strategic partnership. Although the cooperation led to the shares of Hillhouse being diluted, the uncertainty that the two companies were facing decreased.

Zhang Lei believes that the best investment for his firm is investment without exit. However, Hillhouse Capital has been gradually reducing shares of JD.com, since the IT giant's listing in 2014.

(Jing Cai is an intern with The Passage.)