As of December 24, the GF Small Cap Growth fund has delivered a meager three-year return of only 3.36%.
On December 24, fund manager Liu Gesan stepped down from managing the GF Small Cap Growth fund, his longest-tenured portfolio, marking his second departure from a managed product this year. This move brings to light the lackluster performance of Liu's managed products over the recent three-year period. Indeed, the GF Small Cap Growth fund has achieved a return of just 3.36% over the past three years as of December 24.
A broader look at GF Fund reveals a challenging landscape for its active equity products. Among 131 products established for over three years, 45 have posted negative returns over this period as of December 24, with a staggering 90 products underperforming their respective benchmarks. The portfolios of prominent fund managers, including Zheng Chengran, Wu Xingwu, and Lin Yingrui, are notably among the underperformers.
Liu Gesan has relinquished management of two products this year. On December 24, star fund manager Liu Gesan officially stepped down from the GF Small Cap Growth fund. Having taken over from Li Xianfeng on June 19, 2017, Liu managed this fund for over eight years, making it his longest-held product.
During 2019 and 2020, market capital formed a pronounced "crowding" effect in sectors like technology, biopharmaceuticals, new energy, and consumer staples. Liu Gesan capitalized on this trend by heavily concentrating on leading stocks within these sectors, driving the GF Small Cap Growth fund to deliver impressive annual returns of 93.19% and 74.32% in those two years, respectively. Concurrently, two other funds he managed, GF Shuangqing Upgrade and GF Innovation Upgrade, secured the top two spots in the performance rankings for active equity funds in 2019, cementing his reputation at the time.
By the end of 2020, the GF Small Cap Growth fund's assets under management (AUM) had surged to 16.234 billion yuan, and Liu's total managed public fund AUM reached 84.343 billion yuan. However, as the "crowding" trade peaked and began to unravel in 2021, the performance and scale of Liu's managed products suffered a dual decline.
Taking GF Small Cap Growth as an example, its net value growth rates for 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024 were 1.86%, -21.49%, -27.24%, and -4.82%, respectively. By the end of 2024, the fund's AUM had shrunk to 5.835 billion yuan.
As of December 24, 2025, although the GF Small Cap Growth fund has recorded a positive return of 42.09% year-to-date, its cumulative return over the past three years remains a modest 3.36%, significantly lagging behind the 21.05% gain of the CSI 300 Index over the same period.
Prior to Liu's departure, co-managers Chen Yunzhong and Wu Yuanyi were appointed to the fund on March 25, 2025. It is noteworthy that the fund, which had long focused on the new energy sector, showed a clear shift towards an information technology style by the third quarter of 2025.
According to its Q3 2025 report, the top ten holdings of the GF Small Cap Growth fund were Guangdong Hongda Holdings Group Co.,Ltd. (002683.SZ), Joinn Laboratories (China) Co.,Ltd. (603127.SH), Sharetronic Data Technology Co.,Ltd. (300857.SZ), Hangzhou Shunwang Technology Co.,Ltd. (300113.SZ), Shanghai Fudan Microelectronics Group Co.,Ltd. (688385.SH), Fujian Torch Electron Technology Co.,Ltd. (603678.SH), Avic Chengdu Aircraft Company Limited (302132.SZ), Cambricon Technologies Corporation Limited (688256.SH), Sieyuan Electric Co.,Ltd. (002028.SZ), and Glarun Technology Co.,Ltd. (600562.SH).
In addition to GF Small Cap Growth, Liu Gesan also stepped down as fund manager of GF Multi-Strategy Emerging Growth on September 10, 2025. This brings his total product departures for the year to two, leaving him currently managing four funds with a combined AUM of 27.510 billion yuan (calculated based on Q3 report data).
An overview of Liu Gesan's currently managed and recently departed products.
The three-year performance struggles of GF Fund. The year 2025 brought a market recovery and significant improvement in the overall performance of public funds, with over 95% of active equity products achieving positive returns, dispelling the gloom of previous years. However, since regulators issued the "Opinions on Accelerating the High-Quality Development of the Public Fund Industry" in April 2022, there has been a clear requirement for fund companies to incorporate long-term investment performance over three years and actual investor profits into performance assessments.
When examined from a three-year perspective, the overall performance of GF Fund's active equity products remains weak. Data shows that as of December 24, 2025, among 131 products established for over three years, 45 still have negative three-year returns. Furthermore, 90 products have underperformed their respective benchmarks over the same period, accounting for nearly 70% of the total. This list includes products managed by star managers such as Zheng Chengran, Wu Xingwu, and Lin Yingrui.
It has been noted that six products managed by Zheng Chengran have significantly underperformed their benchmarks over the past three years. For instance, the GF High-End Manufacturing Mixed fund saw its net value decline by 35.70% over three years, while its benchmark index rose by 48.92% over the same period, resulting in a performance gap exceeding 80 percentage points. Additionally, his other managed funds—GF Growth Power Three-Year Holding, GF Chengxiang, and GF Xingcheng—recorded three-year returns of -30.32%, -29.75%, and -28.70%, respectively, each lagging behind their benchmarks by over 50 percentage points.
Zheng Chengran rose to fame in 2020 when his GF High-End Manufacturing fund delivered a net value growth rate of 133.83%, securing the runner-up position among active equity funds for the year; the fund's AUM once reached 25.744 billion yuan by the end of Q1 2021. However, four years later, by the end of Q3 2025, the fund's AUM had dwindled to 5.272 billion yuan.
Since the start of 2025, the performance of GF Fund's products has been markedly divergent: while some have more than doubled with returns exceeding 100%, others remain in negative territory. Against the backdrop of the "Fund Management Company Performance Assessment and Management Guidelines (Exposure Draft)" further strengthening the link between fund managers' performance-based compensation and long-term results, the ability to consistently outperform benchmarks has become a critical challenge that the majority of GF's active equity products urgently need to overcome.
(Note: Fund counts are based on combined share classes; net value growth rates are based on Class A shares.)
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