BlackRock, Macquarie, and Millennium Capital Former Employees Eye Hong Kong Hedge Fund Launch
Former employees from BlackRock Inc., Macquarie Group Ltd. and Millennium Capital Management are planning to set up a Hong Kong-based hedge fund which will use computer models to spot trading opportunities in 13 Asian stock markets.
Zentific
Investment Management, led by Chief Investment Officer Christopher Lee,
will start the market-neutral fund early next year, said HS Group, a
Hong Kong-based provider of long-term capital to newer hedge funds,
which will be one of its first investors, in an e-mailed statement. The
other investors are Zentific partners and unidentified institutions,
according to the statement.
Lee,
who headed BlackRock’s scientific active equity department in Hong
Kong, will be joined by head of research Burke Lau, who led Asia and
Japan quantitative research at Macquarie Securities. Michael
Friedlander, Zentific’s chief operating officer, used to work for
billionaire investor Israel Englander’s hedge-fund firm Millennium,
heading a regional team whose responsibilities included risk, operations
and technology matters, according to the statement.
Asia’s
hedge fund industry was until recently dominated by long-biased funds,
which rely on market rallies for returns and can’t generate profits in
downturns. Funds that use computer models to process large volumes of
information and promise to make money in both market conditions are rare
in the region.
Source: Bloomberg
