Private investment firms partner to potentially cash in following sweeping changes in college sports

Two private investment firms have created a platform to help athletic departments find funding with college sports on the verge of sweeping change that could have long-term financial implications

ByThe Associated Press

May 22, 2024,

TAMPA, Fla. -- With college sports on the verge of sweeping change that could have long-term financial implications, two private investment firms have created a platform to help athletic departments find funding.

RedBird Capital and Weatherford Capital announced Wednesday the creation of Collegiate Athletic Solutions, which is trying to cash in on a college sports landscape that’s facing significant upheaval.

The NCAA and its member schools are expected to vote on a proposed $2.77 billion settlement of an antitrust lawsuit this week, one that could leave schools with tighter budgets, or in some cases financial hardships, in the coming years.

CAS would be available to lend money and offer guidance to athletic departments in exchange for a share of future revenue.

“The paradigm shift we are seeing in the collegiate athletics ecosystem is similar to the ones we’ve seen with media distribution models, collective bargaining rights and premium hospitality,” said Gerry Cardinale, founder and managing partner of RedBird Capital in New York. “They’re all centered around the need to create long-term growth by bridging the gap between premium (intellectual property) and optimizing revenue streams.

“CAS addresses athletic departments’ need for near-term capital with additional operational expertise across strategies that can improve competitive positioning.”

Weatherford Capital is headquartered in Tampa, Florida, and run by brothers Will, Sam and Drew Weatherford. Drew Weatherford played football at Florida State and is a member of the school’s board of trustees.

FSU has been negotiating for more than a year with another investment firm, private equity giant Sixth Street, on a potential capital infusion for the Seminoles.

“We are in the late stages of the competitive divide between athletic departments and programs,” Weatherford said. “The impact of conference re-alignment, diverging media rights deals, and the advent of NIL and revenue sharing is creating a greater financial divide at both the university and conference level.

“History has proven that the universities that adeptly invest in their athletic departments consistently win and outpace peer institutions. Our mission at CAS is to offer athletic departments a unique capital solution to invest when and where they need it to compete at the highest level during this tenuous paradigm shift.”

UK dispatch: Joint Committee on Human Rights hears expert evidence on recent ECtHR climate change judgments

Elisabeth Driscoll | U. Bristol Law School, GB

MAY 22, 2024 01:48:29 PM

The UK Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights heard expert evidence on recent European Court of Human Rights judgments surrounding climate change and its relevance to human rights on Wednesday. While the meeting particularly emphasised the effects these judgments will have on the UK, the experts also discussed the contents of climate-related judgments and their impacts on the rule of law. The committee cut off the public meeting due to time constraints, but further position papers are expected from the experts.

Particularly of note was the 2024 Veirein KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz and Others v. Switzerland case, in which an association of senior Swiss women (Senior Women for Climate Protection Switzerland) took the Swiss government to the ECtHR as the climate crisis threatened their health. They applied on the basis that women’s right to life and health under Article 2 and Article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights was violated by Switzerland’s inadequate climate policies and that after exhausting all national remedies, their case was rejected by the Swiss Federal Supreme Court on arbitrary grounds (against their right to fair trial under Article 6). The ECtHR found a violation of their Article 8 and Article 6 rights.

The expert witnesses who testified before the committee were: Lord Jonathan Sumption KC (a former Supreme Court Justice); Jessica Simor KC (a barrister from Matrix Chambers who represented the complainants in the Swiss case); and Nikki Reisch (Director of Climate and Energy and Program and Director of the Climate & Energy Program at the Center for International Environmental Law).

The participants were divided on multiple topics. Particularly of note for its rule of law implications was Lord Sumption and Nikki Reisch’s debate on the extent of rights protection within Article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights. This explicitly protects the “Right to respect for private and family life, home and correspondence” and has been extended, as noted by the meeting chair, to include topics such as health (relevant to the Swiss case), biomedical data and homosexuality. Therefore, as was argued by Reisch, the court’s decision that this right was engaged in the Swiss case may be unsurprising. 

This was opposed by Lord Sumpton, who worried about the implications this would have on countries’ legislative power on climate change as this topic is politically sensitive, complex and controversial, with no definitive scientific consensus on timings and targets that would constitute sufficient state action. He was concerned about the overextension of the Article 8 right leading to unpredictability, citing the first requirement of the rule of law as law being ascertainable and not retrospective: “You can’t have moving goalposts and call it law.” As noted by Sumption, this is a common critique raised by the ECtHR about domestic legislation.

Reisch, however, found that this was nothing groundbreaking, as there have been previous cases applying Article 8 to protection against environmental law. She drew on the “effectiveness” principle that specifies that European human rights are not illusory, stressing that climate change is the most real, explicit, growing risk to human rights (including those specified in Article 8). Her clarification of what the full scale of potential Article 8 applications is likely to be was unfortunately cut off due to time constraints, but she essentially stated that it could be applied to anything that intrudes on a person’s well-being and autonomy.

The impacts the ECtHR judgment is likely to have on the UK were unclear, with Sumption seeing the decision as overreaching, with compromise being needed between the British state and the people to make such policies. In contrast, Reisch drew on recent UK High Court decisions to show that the UK has adhered more closely to their international obligations and has shown that they are willing to be held to account for them.

Hopefully, the position statements and explanatory notes from the witnesses will provide more clarity on this issue.

 

China is accelerating the forced urbanization of rural Tibetans, rights group says

The international rights organization cited a trove of Chinese internal reports contradicting official pronouncements that all Tibetans who have been forced to move, with their past homes destroyed on departure, did so voluntary.

FILE - Yaks graze around tents set up for herders to live in the during the summer grazing season on grasslands near Lhasa in western China's Tibet Autonomous Region, as seen during a rare government-led tour of the region for foreign journalists, Wednesday, June 2, 2021. An extensive report by Human Rights Watch says China is accelerating the forced urbanization of Tibetan villagers and herders, adding to state government and independent reports of efforts to assimilate them through control over their language and traditional Buddhist culture. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File)

May 22, 2024

By 

Associated Press

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — China is accelerating the forced urbanization of Tibetan villagers and herders, Human Rights Watch said, in an extensive report that adds to state government and independent reports of efforts to assimilate rural Tibetans through control over their language and traditional Buddhist culture.

The international rights organization cited a trove of Chinese internal reports contradicting official pronouncements that all Tibetans who have been forced to move, with their past homes destroyed on departure, did so voluntary.

The relocations fit a pattern of often-violent demands that ethnic minorities adopt the state language of Mandarin and pledge their fealty to the ruling Communist Party in western and northern territories that include millions of people from Tibetan, Xinjiang Uyghur, Mongolian and other minority groups.

China claims Tibet has been part of its territory for centuries, although it only established firm control over the Himalayan region after the Communist Party swept to power during a civil war in 1949.

“These coercive tactics can be traced to pressure placed on local officials by higher-level authorities who routinely characterize the relocation program as a non-negotiable, politically critical policy coming straight from the national capital, Beijing, or from Lhasa, the regional capital,” HRW said in the report. “This leaves local officials no flexibility in implementation at the local level and requires them to obtain 100 percent agreement from affected villagers to relocate.”

The report said official statistics suggest that by the end of 2025, more than 930,000 rural Tibetans will have been relocated to urban centers where they are deprived of their traditional sources of income and have difficulty finding work. Lhasa and other large towns have drawn large numbers of migrants from China’s dominant Han ethnic group who dominant politics and the economy.

More than 3 million of the more than 4.5 million Tibetans in rural areas have been forced to build homes and give up their traditional nomadic lifestyles based on yak herding and agriculture, the report said. Along with the official Tibetan Autonomous Region, Tibetans make up communities in the neighboring provinces of Sichuan, Yunnan and Qinghai.

“These relocations of rural communities erode or cause major damage to Tibetan culture and ways of life, not least because most relocation programs in Tibet move former farmers and pastoralists to areas where they cannot practice their former livelihood and have no choice but to seek work as wage laborers in off-farm industries,” HRW said.

China has consistently defended its policies in Tibet as bringing stability and development to a strategically important border region. The region last had anti-government protests in 2008, leading to a massive military crackdown. Foreigners must apply for special permission to visit and journalists are largely barred, apart from those working for Chinese state media outlets.

China consistently says allegations of human rights abuses in Tibetan regions are groundless accusations intended to smear China’s image. Last August, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said human rights conditions in Tibet were “at their historical best.”

“The region has long enjoyed a booming economy, a harmonious and stable society, and effective protection and promotion of cultural heritage,” Wang said at the time. “The rights and freedoms of all ethnic groups, including the freedom of religious belief and the freedom to use and develop their ethnic groups of spoken and written languages are fully guaranteed.”

China, with its population of 1.4 billion people, claims to have eradicated extreme poverty, largely through moving isolated homes and tiny villages into larger communities with better access to transport, electricity, healthcare and education. Those claims have not been independently verified.

China’s economic growth has slowed considerably amid a population that is aging and a youth unemployment rate that has spiked, even as Chinese industries such as EV cars and mobile phones build their market shares overseas.

HRW recommended the U.N. Human Rights Council undertake an independent investigation into human rights violations committed by the Chinese government in Tibet and other areas.

 

Retired judge finds no reliable evidence against Quebec cardinal; purported victim declines to talk

The allegations were contained in an amended class-action lawsuit filed in Canadian court against 100 current and former church personnel of the archdiocese.

FILE - Pope Francis talks to archbishop of Quebec, Cardinal Gerald LaCroix, as they meet at the Santa Marta residence, at the Vatican, Jan. 30, 2017. A retired Canadian judge said Tuesday, May 21, 2024, that he couldn’t find any reliable evidence of sexual misconduct by the archbishop of Quebec, after the purported victim refused to be interviewed and the cardinal strongly denied the claim. (L'Osservatore Romano/Pool Photo via AP, File)

May 22, 2024

By 

Rob Gillies, Nicole Winfield

ROME (AP) — A retired Canadian judge said Tuesday he couldn’t find any reliable evidence of sexual misconduct by the archbishop of Quebec, after the purported victim refused to cooperate with his investigation and the cardinal strongly denied the claim.

Pope Francis had tasked André Denis, a retired judge of the Superior Court of Québec, to conduct a preliminary investigation for the Catholic Church into claims against Archbishop Gérald Lacroix that surfaced in January.

The allegations were contained in an amended class-action lawsuit filed in Canadian court against 100 current and former church personnel of the archdiocese

Denis’ investigation has no bearing on that lawsuit and concerns only the church’s handling of the allegations, since the Vatican has its own procedures to deal with misconduct claims against clergy. The Vatican said Tuesday that based on Denis’ report, it planned no canonical trial against Lacroix, 66.

Francis appointed Lacroix a cardinal in 2014, was welcomed by Lacroix during a 2022 visit to Quebec and last year made him a member of his Council of Cardinals, nine top prelates from around the globe who advise him on church matters.

Lacroix had removed himself from day-to-day work at the archdiocese in January, after the allegations were added onto the original 2022 class-action complaint against the archdiocese. The allegations against him date back to 1987 and 1988 and were made by a woman who was 17 at the time, according to the complaint.

Lacroix strongly denied the claims at the time of his auto-suspension and did so again when interviewed by Denis, the judge said.

“He affirmed with conviction that he never carried out the actions with which he was accused,” Denis said. “The elements gathered during the investigation make it implausible that the events associated with the cardinal occurred,” Denis told a news conference in Quebec City.

However, Denis also said the alleged victim refused to be interviewed by him to provide her side or to give him access to her court filing. He acknowledged his investigation as a result was incomplete. It is not unheard of for victims to refuse to cooperate with church investigations, especially while civil claims are proceedin

“I am unable to say whether or not the alleged act took place,” Denis said. “I’m even unable to identify a place, an event, a precise date or any other circumstance. The plaintiff’s refusal to co-operate in any way with my investigation has left me at a loss.”

He said if the purported victim does eventually want to collaborate, he would ask the Vatican to extend his mandate.

The same class-action lawsuit also accused Lacroix’s predecessor, Cardinal Marc Ouellet of misconduct, claims he strongly denied. Francis shelved a church trial against Ouellet in 2022 after a priest investigator determined there weren’t enough elements to bring forward a canonical trial.

In that case, the priest interviewed the alleged victim by Zoom.

While local dioceses often turn to lay experts to conduct preliminary investigations into abuse or sexual misconduct allegations, it is rare for the Vatican to entrust such an investigation to a non-priest.

In a statement, the archdiocese of Quebec said it welcomed the developments on the canonical investigation but said Lacroix had decided to continue to remain “on the sidelines” of the day-to-day work of the archdiocese until the civil litigation is resolved.

The statement “deplored” the delays in the lawsuit caused by the addition of new defendants and expressed its willingness to negotiate an out-of court settlement.

“On behalf of the Church, we wish to express our sensitivity to the suffering of survivors of sexual abuse and those who are seeking justice and reparation,” said Auxiliary Bishop Marc Pelchat, who has temporarily taken over day-to-day running of the archdiocese. “We are determined to contribute to a just settlement.”

___

Gillies contributed from Toronto.

A rare find in ancient Timorese mud may rewrite the history of human settlement in Australasia

Mike W. Morley, Flinders University; Ceri Shipton, UCL; Kasih Norman, Griffith University; Shimona Kealy, Australian National University, and Sue O'Connor, Australian National University
Wed, 22 May 2024 

View of the Lailea River from on top of the hill containing Laili rockshelter. Mike Morley


Humans arrived in Australia at least 65,000 years ago, according to archaeological evidence. These pioneers were part of an early wave of people travelling eastwards from Africa, through Eurasia, and ultimately into Australia and New Guinea.

But this was only one of many waves of migration in the story of the human colonisation of the globe. These waves were probably driven by climate change and the ability of groups to adapt to a wide range of environments.

In new research published in Nature Communications, we have found evidence that a large wave of migration reached the island of Timor not long after 50,000 years ago. Our work at Laili rock shelter suggests the people who first reached Australia some 65,000 years ago came via New Guinea, while Timor and other southern islands were only colonised by a later wave of settlers.

Archaeological trench in Laili rockshelter. Mike Morley
Potential routes to Australia


Timor has long been regarded as a potential stepping-stone island for the first human migration between mainland Southeast Asia and Australia and New Guinea. At the time of these ancient migrations, sea levels were lower, so many of what are now islands in Southeast Asia were joined to the mainland in a region known as Sunda, and Australia and New Guinea were joined together in a single continent known as Sahul.

The islands between Sunda to the west and Sahul to the east are known as Wallacaea. These islands have never been connected to each other or the mainland, owing to the deep channels that separate them. This has meant that even when sea levels were much lower than today they remained as islands.

Map showing ancient land masses of Sunda (in the west) and Sahul, with the Wallacean Islands in between that always remained islands even during lower sea levels. Modern landmasses are shaded green, ancient ones dark grey. Huxley’s and Lydekker’s lines represent boundaries between realms inhabited by different groups of animals. Shipton et al. (2021)More

The search for evidence of early migrations on Timor has been hampered by a lack of suitable sediments in caves and rock shelters.

However, we found a unique source of evidence at Laili rock shelter, overlooking the Laleia river in central-north Timor-Leste. Unlike other sites in the region, Laili preserved deep sediments dating between 59,000 and 54,000 years ago which contained no sign of human presence.

The dig at Laili rockshelter. Mike Morley

On top of these layers we found clear signs of human arrival, in the dirt occurring about 44,000 years ago. This provides clear evidence that while humans were initially absent from the site and the local landscape, they subsequently arrived in what must have been significant numbers.

From other research, we also know there is evidence of humans arriving at other sites in Timor-Leste and nearby Flores Island between 47,000 and 45,000 years ago. Taken together, all this evidence strongly supports the view that humans only arrived in this region around this time.
Evidence in the dirt

Our analysis of the sediment layers at Laili suggests humans arrived in a deliberate and large-scale colonisation effort, rather than ad-hoc settlement by a small population. This is clearly seen in the earliest traces of occupation, which include hearths, dense accumulations of stone artefacts, and the remains of a diet rich in fish and shellfish.

We used a technique called micromorphology to study the layers of sediment under the microscope.

We could see the sediment from before the time of occupation did not carry signs of human presence. But when humans moved in to the site, many traces of human occupation appeared abruptly, including compressed trampled layers caused by the passage of people on the shelter floor.
Island hopping to Sahul

Our findings may prompt a re-evaluation of the route and timing of the earliest human migration into Sahul. They also show movement to the islands was an ongoing process rather than a single event, with occupation of the southern islands occurring thousands of years after the initial settlement of Australia.

The intensity of the initial occupation we found at Laili suggests this migration may have been large enough to overwhelm previous migrations in the islands of Southeast Asia and Australasia.

The earlier dispersal waves, including the people using the ancient Madjebebe rock shelter in Australia, may have been small numbers of people coming from a different route further north via New Guinea. The later wave of dispersal through the Wallacean Islands may have formed a much more significant arrival of humans on Sahul.

The absence of human occupation on Timor before 50,000 years ago indicates that humans arrived on the island later than previously supposed. This supports the theory that humans first arrived in Australia via New Guinea rather than Timor.

This path is less direct, but it may be explained by the fact the southern islands including Timor have far fewer land-dwelling animals to eat. Early colonists would have needed the flexibility to live on fish and shellfish. So moving into these southern islands could have been more challenging than the northern islands which had more medium to large land animals.

This article is republished from The Conversation. It was written by: Mike W. Morley, Flinders University; Ceri Shipton, UCL; Kasih Norman, Griffith University; Shimona Kealy, Australian National University, and Sue O'Connor, Australian National University

Read more:


At last, Australia has fuel efficiency standards – but they’re weaker than they could have been


How Neanderthal language differed from modern human – they probably didn’t use metaphors


Bridgerton is a progressive fantasy about the past. Do romance readers care about its historical accuracy?

Mike W. Morley receives funding from the Australian Research Council (ARC).

Kasih Norman receives funding from the Leakey Foundation and Rock Art Australia.

Sue O'Connor receives funding from the Australian Research Council (ARC).

Ceri Shipton and Shimona Kealy do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

China's food security dream faces land, soil and water woes

Mei Mei Chu
Updated Thu, May 23, 2024 





By Mei Mei Chu

BEIJING (Reuters) - China, the world's biggest agriculture importer, has set targets to drastically reduce its reliance on overseas buying over the coming decade in line with its push for food security, but they will be exceedingly difficult to meet, experts say.

With limited land and water, China will have to sharply increase farming productivity through technology, including genetically modified crops, and expand area under cultivation to meet Beijing's 10-year projections.

The government envisions 92% self-sufficiency in staple grains and beans by 2033, up from 84% during 2021-2023, according to a document released in late April, on a path towards President Xi Jinping's goal to become an "agriculture power" by the middle of the century.

Cutting the country's imports would be a blow to producers from the U.S. to Brazil and Indonesia, who have expanded capacity to meet demand from China's 1.4 billion people, the world's largest market for soybeans, meat and grains.

Over the 10 years to 2033 the agriculture ministry projects a 75% plunge in corn imports to 6.8 million tons and a 60% drop for wheat to 4.85 million tons.

For soybeans, the biggest item on a farm import bill that totalled $234 billion last year, Beijing sees imports falling 21% to 78.7 million tons in a decade.

Those targets defy the trends of the past decade in which grains and oilseed imports have surged 87%.

"Forecasting a sharp reversal where in 10 years the country will be importing less than it does today seems questionable," said Darin Friedrichs, co-founder of Shanghai-based Sitonia Consulting.

China will struggle to meet its targets mainly due to a lack of land and water, five analysts and industry executives say.

In stark contrast to Beijing's projections, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) sees China's corn imports in 2033/34 roughly in line with current levels and wheat imports declining 20%. In the biggest divergence, USDA expects soybean imports to rise 39%.

The USDA also expects growth in demand for animal feed, a key user of soybeans and corn, to outpace domestic corn output expansion and spur imports of sorghum and barley.

NATIONAL SECURITY

Food security has long been a priority for China, which has a painful history of famine and must feed nearly 20% of the global population with less than 9% of its arable land and 6% of its water resources.

The urgency to cut dependence on imports grew after the country faced supply chain disruptions during the COVID pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

A trade war with the U.S., its No.2 agriculture supplier after Brazil, and climate shocks such as heavy rains last year that damaged China's wheat harvest, have added to the challenge.

On June 1, China will implement a food security law that calls for absolute self-sufficiency in staple grains and requires local governments to include food security in their economic and development plans.

That will add to other efforts to bolster food production, including stepped up grains insurance cover for farmers to protect their income, announced this week.

Last month, Beijing launched a drive to raise grain output by at least 50 million tons by 2030, spotlighting upgraded farmland and investments in seed technology for higher crop yields and quality.

SOIL CHALLENGES

China increased production of corn, soybeans, potatoes and oilseeds last year after expanding planting on previously uncultivated land and encouraging farmers to switch from cash crops to staples.

However, even as the world's no. 2 corn producer harvested a record 288.84 million metric tons last year, imports surged to a near-record 27.1 million tons, driven by traders' preference for corn from overseas that is often higher quality and cheaper.

Production growth has hit a bottleneck due to insufficient arable land, small production scale and a lack of farmers and agriculture technology, state media reported.

China's arable land per capita is less than one-third the level in Brazil and one-sixth the level of the U.S., World Bank data from 2021 shows.

Degraded and polluted soil in a country where a significant share of land is either rocky mountains or desert leave it with little space for expansion.

The government, which has increasingly called for protection of its fertile black soil, is set to complete a four-year soil survey in 2025. The last survey, in 2014, found that 40% of its arable land was degraded from overuse of chemicals and heavy metal contamination.

To compensate, China is pouring millions of dollars into research of farming water-intensive crops such as rice in the deserts of Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang.

By turning sand into soil and breeding saline-tolerant crops, it aims to develop more farmland, a strategy industry executives say will take time and heavy investments in fertiliser, irrigation and biotechnology.

One obstacle is China's predominance of small farms, run by aging owners who may not be able to afford or operate machinery such as drone sprayers, more productive seeds and technology such as big data and AI.

Farms in China average 0.65 hectares, compared to 187 hectares in the U.S. and 60 hectares in Germany. China is gradually shifting towards a consolidation of its fragmented farms.

After decades of hesitation, it is slowly adopting genetically modified crops, this year approving the planting of corn and soybean varieties that are higher-yielding and insect-resistant, as well as gene-edited disease-resistant wheat in hopes of accelerating production growth.

China's soybean yields at 1.99 tons per hectare lag the 3.38 and 3.4 ton-yields in Brazil and the U.S., which have embraced genetically modified soybeans.

But analysts say the government's target for cutting soybean imports is unrealistic. At best, China could ease its dependence on soybean imports to 70% from more than 80% now, said Carl Pray, an agriculture professor at Rutgers University in the U.S.

Almost all of China's soybeans are high protein varieties to produce tofu, and to replace imports it would need to rapidly expand production of high-oil producing varieties for cooking oil, which he said would be hard, even with research.

"To produce enough soybeans to replace the Brazilian and U.S. imports, there is just not enough land," Pray said.

($1 = 7.2276 yuan)

(This story has been refiled to correct a typo in the chart)

(Reporting by Mei Mei Chu; Editing by Tony Munroe and Sonali Paul)

Canada's Power Corp shuts down China unit, lays off staff, sources say

Selena Li

Tue, May 21, 2024,

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Power Corporation of Canada (Power Corp) has shut its China investment unit and dismissed all staff, said two people briefed on the matter, becoming the latest Western financial firm to pull back amid the country's economic challenges.

Power Sustainable, which is the asset management arm of Power Corp and manages $4.5 billion of assets globally, started laying off all of its 17 local staff in recent weeks as it moved towards shutting down the Shanghai-based unit, said the people.

Economic slowdown has seen many of the Western financial firms that scrambled to expand China operations a few years ago take a hit on their earnings and rein in their ambitions for what was a key piece of their global growth strategy.

The closure of Power Sustainable (Shanghai) Investment Management, which was established in 2019 and invested in public equities in China, was due to the group's change in strategy, the people said, declining to be named as they are not authorised to speak to media.

It is not immediately known how much assets the onshore arm managed. The group utilised the platform to not only invest on behalf of onshore clients but also offshore clients, one of the two people said.

Power Sustainable made "a strategic decision as part of the realignment of its (investment) management business to wind down its China public equity strategy", a Montreal-based Power Corp spokesperson told Reuters without commenting on local staff.

"We remain optimistic about China's future prospects and economic growth," said the spokesperson.

Power Corp will remain invested in the country with investments in mainland China's public equity markets through its Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor (QFII) licence, the spokesperson added.

A QFII licence allows offshore institutions to mostly invest in China's listed securities without having to set up operations in the country.

The Power group of companies has investments in China through one of its subsidiary's 27.8% holding in China Asset Management Company (ChinaAMC), China's second-largest mutual fund manager.

Power Corp had in recent months turned more pessimistic about the investment business amid China's faltering economic growth and rising geopolitical uncertainties, the people said.

The unit's closure adds to a growing list of global financial firms that have cut back their China business presence or growth ambitions in the recent past, as prospects dimmed for the world's second-largest economy.

Over the last two months, Fidelity International, Morgan Stanley and Legal & General have either sharply cut China-focused jobs or have shelved expansion plans, Reuters reported.

(Reporting by Selena Li in Hong Kong; Editing by Sumeet Chatterjee and Christopher Cushing)