EIG to quit Goldman platform for Asia listing US asset manager EIG Global Energy Partners is to delist its investment vehicle from Goldman Sachs's US electronic platform and list in Hong Kong, according to people familiar with the matter, a decision that reflects an unattractive US regulatory environment. When EIG, in which China's sovereign wealth fund has just taken a minority stake, originally listed its Gateway unit on Goldman's GSTrUE platform before the financial crisis, its plan was to eventually migrate to the NYSE. This would have followed the path from GSTrUE to the NYSE that US private equity investor Apollo Management took last year and its rival Oaktree Capital plans to take soon. GSTrUE was a quasi-public exchange set up in the US for trading stocks of companies that do not want to go public. But since Apollo went public in April 2011, the regulatory burden in the US has become far more onerous and inflexible, with the emergence of the Dodd/Frank Act as part of a wide-ranging reform of Wall Street. That in turn has made an offshore listing far more attractive, according to the people familiar with the situation. EIG, with about $10bn to invest in the energy sector, considered listing in both Australia and Singapore before settling on Hong Kong. "Hong Kong was the most appropriate" and the regulators the most welcoming, added one of the people. It is part of EIG's plan to ramp up in this part of the world. A spokesman for Washington, DC-based EIG declined to comment on the listing, which is expected in coming months. The ramp-up in Asia includes the minority investment from China Investment Corporation, which has has a long history with EIG. CIC has made investing in energy one of its priorities, and has invested in EIG's funds as well as being a co-investor with it on projects ranging from a Brazilian midstream operation to a tar sands undertaking in Canada. CIC was attracted to investing in the fund manager itself by the core of engineering talent at EIG, at a time when many generalist investors are rushing into energy assets. CIC will not have a board seat, a move intended to head off any potential issues with other investors. Blair Thomas, EIG's chief executive, told the Financial Times that much of the company's focus is on unconventional resources, including shale gas. Gas is a destination, not a bridge to anything else. Over time, its share of the global energy mix will increase. Mr Thomas noted. It will eventually undermine all the subsidies for renewables. Still, he added that with natural gas prices very low, at about $2.50 per million British thermal units, the poor profit margins make the US currently less attractive as a destination for investment. Proceeds from both the listing and the CIC stake sale will be used to help the investment group to expand its operations in Asia. EIG's move signals the demise of the GSTrUE listing experiment that was meant to offer alternative investment groups the best of both worlds - the liquidity of an exchange without the disclosures that public exchanges require. But these groups soon discovered that there wasn't much liquidity and they could get far higher valuations by going public. GSTrUE is now part of a Nasdaq platform but when Oaktree, which filed to list last year, lists in New York, it will pass into history.