GF Fund: Billion-Dollar Veterans Step Down, Star Managers Face Headwinds, De-Starification Transformation Under Pressure

In February 2026, GF Fund, a leading institution in the public offering industry, announced a key personnel change—Billion-level fund manager Fu Youxing stepped down from his position as Vice General Manager due to “work reasons,” while remaining as a fund manager. This move is not an isolated event but a significant signal of the company’s accelerated shift toward “de-starization and platformization” in its investment research transformation. Meanwhile, the company’s active equity business continues to face pressure, with top fund managers’ scales shrinking, core products underperforming, and over 60% of products consistently lagging behind benchmarks. How to balance veteran experience with new talent, and reverse the downward trend in performance and scale during this transformation, has become a pressing challenge for GF Fund.

Billion-level veteran steps down, signaling clear investment research transformation

As a benchmark figure in GF Fund’s value investing, Fu Youxing has over 13 years of experience as a fund manager. By the end of 2025, he managed assets totaling 10.276 billion yuan and is recognized as a core veteran managing over 10 billion yuan. His resignation from the Vice General Manager role is widely interpreted as GF Fund’s move to promote a “de-administration, return to professionalism” approach in its investment research system, aiming to reduce managerial interference and strengthen the core role of the research team.

Although he remains a fund manager, Fu Youxing’s key products have already shown pressure. Wind data indicates that the GF Stable Growth A fund under his management has underperformed its benchmark over the past three and five years. Its net value has not recovered to the high point of January 2021, and its management scale has shrunk from over 20 billion yuan at its peak to 10.276 billion yuan at the end of 2025, nearly halving the active equity management scale. The personnel change and performance decline reflect the common difficulties faced by veteran star managers at GF Fund.

Star managers face cold reception, with both scale and performance under pressure

Fu Youxing’s situation is not unique; several star fund managers at GF Fund have experienced varying degrees of decline in recent years—from top performers to shrinking scales and departures, the star halo is gradually fading.

Liu Geshong, once the top star in the market, managed assets of 84.33 billion yuan at his peak at the end of 2020, representing GF Fund’s core growth style. However, due to the ongoing adjustments in heavy positions like new energy and semiconductors from 2022 to 2025, many of his products suffered losses exceeding 15% over the past three years, leading to large-scale redemptions. As of the third quarter of 2025, Liu’s managed assets had shrunk to 27.51 billion yuan, a decline of over 70% from the peak. On the product side, he divested from core products in 2025, including GF Multi-Asset Emerging Stocks and GF Small Cap Growth Hybrid (LOF), which he managed for over eight and a half years. By the end of 2025, he managed only four products, a significant reduction from his peak.

Unlike Liu Geshong’s “reducing burden,” another billion-level fund manager, Zhang Dongyi, chose to leave entirely. As a talent cultivated internally with a focus on consumer/value style, Zhang’s assets peaked at over 14 billion yuan. However, since 2021, all his managed products have suffered losses, with his flagship funds experiencing declines of over 40%, ranking consistently in the lower tiers. His management scale shrank to less than 3 billion yuan. On March 6, 2025, Zhang announced the complete liquidation of all five managed funds, officially leaving GF Fund. Poor performance and shrinking scale were the main reasons for his departure.

More notably, Wang Mingxu, Assistant General Manager and Head of Investment Management, managed products that performed the worst during the 2025 A-share structural bull market, creating a rare “double bottom” phenomenon. According to Sina Finance, in the top 10 list of market-wide active equity funds with the largest declines in 2025, four were managed solely by Wang Mingxu. For example, GF Domestic Demand Growth Hybrid A fell 16.31% in 2025, ranking fourth from the bottom, just behind the worst performer. His underperformance continued to worsen; in the first three quarters of 2025, his seven funds collectively lost 1.135 billion yuan, and all eight funds in the fourth quarter also suffered losses, totaling approximately 173 million yuan. This poor performance led to a significant scale reduction, with Wang’s management assets dropping from a peak of 30 billion yuan in 2021 to 7.265 billion yuan at the end of 2025—a decline of over 4 billion yuan in one year, with all products experiencing net redemptions.

Widespread underperformance exposes shortcomings in the research system

The collective decline of star managers reflects the overall weakness of GF Fund’s active equity business. Wind data shows that by the end of 2025, 66 active equity funds at GF Fund had underperformed their benchmarks by more than 10% over the past three years, ranking among the highest in the industry. Notably, GF Chengxiang Hybrid A has seen a total decline of 55.67% since inception, and GF New Economy Hybrid A has fallen 32.45% over three years, underperforming the benchmark by over 40 percentage points, making it a poor performer in the market.

This widespread underperformance reveals deep-rooted issues in the company’s investment research system. Previously, GF Fund relied heavily on star fund managers, forming a “star-driven” development model. When market styles shifted and star managers’ strategies misaligned with market trends, product performance became unstable. Between 2022 and 2025, with frequent style rotations in the A-share market—between value and growth—this model’s flaws were further magnified, leading to a double decline in performance and scale in the active equity business.

De-starization and transformation underway, multiple challenges remain

Faced with performance pressures and industry changes, GF Fund has launched a “de-starization and platformization” transformation of its investment research system. This move aligns with industry trends and regulatory guidance. In March 2024, the China Securities Regulatory Commission issued guidelines emphasizing the strengthening of core research capabilities, discouraging star fund managers, and promoting a “platform, team-based, integrated, multi-strategy” research system. This has become a key driver for GF Fund’s accelerated transformation.

From the perspective of implementation, GF Fund is promoting a “mentor-mentee” model, allowing veteran managers like Fu Youxing and Liu Geshong to gradually transfer some product management responsibilities to younger fund managers, creating space for their growth. The goal is to weaken the influence of individual managers and enhance the overall research team’s capabilities. Additionally, the company is continuously improving its research platform, optimizing risk control mechanisms, and restructuring the research team to build a more resilient system that reduces dependence on individual performance.

However, the road ahead is not smooth. Key challenges include how to retain the rich investment experience of veterans like Fu Youxing while stimulating the vitality of young managers, and establishing stable, replicable investment methodologies. Improving the performance of active equity products and reversing widespread underperformance are critical to restoring investor confidence and determining the success of the transformation. Moreover, in an increasingly competitive industry with evolving market styles, how to make the platform-based research system effective and rebuild the competitive edge of active equity remains to be seen.

From an industry perspective, “de-starization and platformization” are inevitable trends for high-quality development in the public fund sector. GF Fund’s strategic layout is forward-looking, but results will not be immediate. For GF Fund, this personnel adjustment and performance pressure are both challenges and opportunities. Only by staying true to the core of professionalism, continuously optimizing the research system, and balancing veteran experience with new talent, as well as scale and performance, can the firm gradually overcome difficulties and regain its core competitiveness in active equity investing.