US investment bank, Morgan Stanley, has appointed Kevin O’Reilly to run its China commodities at the turn of the year, reported Bloomberg this week.PARA_BREAK_SENTINEL_9f8e7d6c

US investment bank, Morgan Stanley, has appointed Kevin O’Reilly to run its China commodities at the turn of the year, reported Bloomberg this week. O’Reilly will be based in Shanghai and will report to Harry Soh, Asia head of commodities. Prior to the new role O’Reilly was working as a Managing Director in Purchase, New York, where he ran Morgan Stanley’s commodities hedge fund business. Asia is becoming increasingly important in commodity asset pricing, particularly given China’s voracious appetite for copper, gold and coal. And Morgan Stanley is not the first bank to make a strategic move in light of this, Barclays Capital having relocated James Groves to Singapore from London in September to head up its Asian commodity unit. GDP figures for Asia are likely to remain strong in 2011 with China’s GDP forecast to grow by 9 per cent according to a recent report by UBS. If GDP figures, globally, improve in 2011 it should cause an upswing in commodity prices from metals through to soft commodities to satisfy demand. To further illustrate the Asia commodity story, CTA/Managed Futures was the best performing strategy in Asia ex-Japan for November, gaining +6.42 per cent to leave it +13.40 per cent YTD. It’ll be interesting to see what level of performance this strategy generates in 2011.