Kenneth Ho

Hong Kong-based multi-family office Carret Private Capital, led by Kenneth Ho, has opened a Singapore office. The new office is led by Eugene Huang. He has previously worked at Indosuez Wealth Management, Nomura, Barclays and Merrill Lynch. The firm manages more than US$1 billion in assets. Carret Private Capital is an affiliate of Carret Asset Management in New York.

According to Eurekahedge, the global hedge fund industry saw its assets decline US$154.4 billion throughout 2018, down 6.3% from its end-2017 figure – the largest yearly percentage drop since 2008, as fund managers struggled under the global trade tension and aggressive Fed rate hikes which caused elevated market volatility level through the better part of the year. Investors redeemed US$93.4 billion during the year, and US$61.0 billion of performance losses were recorded.

The Eurekahedge Hedge Fund Index was up 2.32% in January, as the risk-on sentiment returned to the market, propelling the MSCI AC World Index (Local) up 7.36% during January. Throughout 2018, hedge fund managers posted losses of 4.08%, outperforming the global equity market which slumped 10.18% over the year.

Seiji Inoue has left his role as head of Point72 Asset Management’s Tokyo office, reportedly to join Citigroup Securities Japan as a co-head of institutional sales. Inoue started his career in 1992 at Nomura Securities and, prior to joining Point72 in 2014, he has also worked at Goldman Sachs.

Rebecca French

Rebecca French (formerly Ward) has rejoined MKP Capital as a director of client solutions in its Singapore office. She previously worked for MKP in London. Most recently, she was head of IR at Fuchs Capital Partners. Earlier in her career, she has worked at Stable Asset Management and Rampart Capital.

According to Eurekahedge, hedge fund managers focusing on Asia Pacific have been suffering from the US-China tariff spat and the Fed’s rate hikes, which sent Asian equity markets and currencies plummeting. Greater China and India mandates, the two best performers among regional mandates in 2017, were down 14.24% and 7.37% respectively throughout 2018.

The Eurekahedge Hedge Fund Index was down 3.85% in 2018, outperforming the MSCI AC World Index (Local) which declined 10.18% over the year. Throughout the year, the global hedge fund industry saw performance-based losses and net investor outflows totalling US$58.9 billion and US$51.6 billion respectively, in contrast to how the industry assets grew US$221.9 billion over the preceding year.

According to the FT, Citi’s prime brokerage has started to offboard smaller hedge fund clients in Asia as a result of apparently losing up to US$180m on money lent to a Hong Kong-based hedge fund. It seems that Citi is now reluctant to have prime brokerage clients with less than US$100m in AUM, although Citi has not made any official comments regarding this.

Hedge funds were down 2.15% for the year in the 10 months to end of October. This is their weakest performance on record since 2008 when they declined 9.55%. Almost 47% of the managers are in the green for the year with roughly 8% of the managers posting double-digit gains as tracked in the Eurekahedge Global Hedge Funds database.

Fish

First Degree Asset Management, the fund management business in Singapore set-up by Stephen “Fish” Fisher in 2011 when he left JP Morgan after a couple of decades at the firm, is evolving. The firm has now become a fund platform described as “a platform by managers for managers”. First Degree is offering independent managers a licensing umbrella and guidance on how to structure and manage a fund. Newly independent managers often face issues with managing both business set-up and managing the investment strategy. First Degree, with its existing infrastructure, seeks to help portfolio managers to focus on managing money by taking care of a lot of the other tasks and issues faced by new fund launches. Led by Fish, First Degree also benefits from the involvement of Omar Taheri, formerly head of business development at Swiss-Asia, as an adviser.