European Investors Spearhead Interest in Asian Hedge Funds
During the first five and a half months of the year, investor interest in hedge funds focused on Asia has increased when compared with the same period a year ago. To date, the BHA research team has collected 232 mandates from investors seeking Asia-focused funds, which represents a sizable and significant increase over the same time period in 2009 when 174 mandates were collected for Asia-focused funds.
The leads came primarily from Europe (51 percent), North America (32 percent) and Asia (15 percent). The remaining few investors with interest in Asia came from Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East (2 percent).
One U.S. endowment that has primarily been on the sidelines with regards to new hedge fund investments during the past two years has recently begun a passive search to seek out fundamentally driven, long/short equity funds focused on Southeast Asia. While the endowment is just in the beginning stages of its search, it feels as though the opportunity for such a fund is more promising now than at any time since 2008.
As we head into the second half of the second quarter, BHA analysts will continue to monitor interest in Asia-focused funds, as well as the regions this interest is coming from.