Hong Kong is on its way up to become a global hedge fund center.
So says Kenneth Stemme, head of research at New York–based Larch Lane Advisors, which has seeded 26 hedge funds that collectively manage $3.7 billion.
“My first trip to Asia was in 1997, and my CEO first came in 1990,” Stemme says. “Over the past 20 years, Tokyo was the first stop. Now it is not. Increasingly, Hong Kong is the first stop. For a while there was a push and pull between Hong Kong and Singapore on where the talent is. There is talent in both places, but right now we see Hong Kong in the ascendance and Singapore losing some ground.”
Stemme says he will be coming to Asia, particularly Hong Kong, more often in the coming months to look for hedge funds to seed because of the talent pool and potential opportunities the city offers. Larch Lane, which hasn’t yet seeded an Asian fund, is in talks with several Hong Kong–based startups and may seed as much as $100 million in founding capital per fund if those talks succeed, he says.....