The latest special offering from Hedgeweek looks at hedge funds in Asia. The theme? That after years as the poor cousin of its US and European counterparts, the Asian hedge fund industry is maturing rapidly – albeit from a low base.
Some numbers:
- There are 760 Asian hedge funds, with aggregate assets of $130bn, according to Asiahedge. Estimating for those that don’t report to databases, this could mean about 900 funds, and perhaps $200bn in assets – or at least 10 per cent of the global industry.
- Growth of Asian hedge funds in London is slowing, while regional centres expand. They expect to see this continue – and while the ratio of managers between Hong Kong and Singapore remains broadly constant, Singapore appears to be growing slightly faster, helped in part by a relaxed regulatory regime for managers.
- Hong Kong managers ran 15 per cent of hedge funds that invest in Asia last year, compared with 10 per cent for Singapore, says Eurekahedge – but it was the latter which dominated new launches with 24 start-ups compared with HK’s six.
- Equity long/short until recently accounted for as much as 80 per cent of hedge funds in the region, that proportion is decreasing with the emergence of more fixed-income, quantitative and multi-strategy approaches They now put equity long/short at 55 per cent, multi-strategy at 15 per cent, with CTA and fixed income on 5 per cent.
- About 48 per cent of Asian hedge funds have less than $50m under management – compared with more than 60 per cent three years ago.
- Nearly half of all Asian hedge funds have been running for more than three years. Almost 200 for more than five years.
- The capacity pictures is starting to resemble elsewhere – with a good track record virtually ensuring a close within 12 to 36 months. Add to that the smaller underlying capital markets, and fewer than half the 9 per cent of Asian funds that have more than $500m are accepting new capital.