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Since their inception in late 2007, the Qualified Domestic Institutional Investor (QDII) funds, which help Chinese investors to invest in foreign capital markets, have experienced significant portfolio losses and persistent fund outflows. While these losses are large in absolute terms, QDII funds, on average, performed better than Chinese A-share funds, but slightly worse than a group of foreign mutual funds. Our study focuses on the QDII industry, and asks three interrelated questions: (1) why have there been large fund outflows from the industry? (2) what explains QDII funds’ poor performance? and (3) why have QDII funds been so heavily exposed to the Hong Kong market? Our empirical analysis shows that the persistent capital outflows were primarily a result of disappointing fund performance. This poor performance can, in turn, be explained by the deficiency of knowledge required of QDII fund managers to successfully invest in foreign capital markets and manage global portfolios. Finally, our study goes some way to explain the phenomenon of QDII funds’ large asset allocation in the Hong Kong market. This ‘Hong Kong bias’ is shown to be consistent with the well-documented ‘home bias’ behaviour in cross-border portfolio investment, but is greatly exacerbated by the lack of global investing experience of QDII managers.

Research on caregivers’ experiences of and perspectives on preparing young people to leave care in Africa is lacking. A clearer understanding of caregivers’ practice and experience is important for developing improved care-leaving services. The aim of this study is to describe the experiences and perceptions of caregivers providing care-leaving services at one residential care institution in Addis Abba, Ethiopia.

A qualitative description research design was used to examine the perspectives of seven caregivers and three key informants concerning the preparation of female care-leavers for leaving care and their readiness to lead an adult life in Ethiopia. Participants were purposively selected and data were collected through focus group discussions and in-depth interviews. The generated data were analysed using thematic analysis.

Caregivers are passionate about their work, seeing it more as a calling than as a job, and think of themselves as parents to the children. Most reported receiving at least some training, albeit informal or ad hoc, and faced challenges because of lack of resources. Regarding their preparation of the girls for leaving care, caregivers reported inadequate success in financial literacy and savings, continued schooling, cooking, cultural literacy and aftercare support.

This study thus underscores the absence of a preparation for leaving care practice guideline and an independent policy that guides care-leaving in Ethiopia. Policy improvement on caregiving that recognises and values the complexity of the job of caregiving, and thus the need for greater education, is highly needed. This paper sheds light on the issue of supporting caregivers’ attempt to mentor female care-leavers in Ethiopia.