Monthly Archives: November 2014

Kazuki Ikeya has joined Horizon Asset Management in Tokyo as an equity portfolio manager. He was most recently a prop trader at BNP Paribas and earlier a risk trader at Nomura.

Steve Zhang is launching an Asia-focused fund of hedge funds in Singapore with his new firm Pacrise Investment Management. He was until recently a portfolio manager at Permal.

Steve Zhang

Tokyo Live: Prime minister Abe has called a snap election in December. With no real opposition anywhere to be seen (“the lights are on, but nobody’s home, the elevator doesn’t go to the top”), Tokyo Live predicts a very low voter turnout. What is there to vote about? This is an unnecessary and expensive election which is not in Japan’s best interest.

Yugo Yamamoto has joined King Street Capital Management in Tokyo as a managing director. He was most recently at JP Morgan and prior to that at credit hedge fund ZAIS Group, UBS and Lehman Brothers.

Yugo Yamamoto

Akiko Matsuda has left her gig as SAIL Advisors’ business development person for Japan. Prior to joining SAIL in 2013, she was working in cap intro and corporate access at Nomura and Lehman Brothers.

Japan’s GPIF has appointed Hiromichi Mizuno as its first ever CIO. He will take up his post in January. Mizuno already serves on GPIF’s investment committee since July this year. He will now leave his role at PE house Coller Capital where he has worked since 2003. He was earlier at Sumitomo Trust.

Asia ex-Japan focused hedge funds have grown their asset base by US$11.2 billion so far in 2014. They are up 7.44% year-to-date as of end of October, according to Eurekahedge.

Charles Allard, who recently left Winton Capital, has joined Nikko Asset Management as head of sales for North Asia. He will continue to be based in Hong Kong.

Charles Allard

Our friends at BFC Asset Management hosted their annual alternative investments seminar for pension funds in Tokyo today. Overall the big crowd of Japanese pension funds attedning were pretty positive on hedge funds (as long as we are talking about the right hedge funds chosen and introduced by the right company). There were also some good noises about PE, infrastructure and smart beta. A growing number of the pension funds have adopted a “let’s look at what GPIF does and do that” approach which in the medium term may mean that we’ll see more alternative investments from this group of investors.

Mariana Ibrahim, who has spent her whole career so far at PAAMCO and its predecessor KBC Asset Management, has left SIngapore and moved to Hong Kong to join Credit Suisse’s prime brokerage in a capital services role.

Mariana Ibrahim