AI Magazine Issue 2 2017

60 Acquisition International - February 2017 Gen2 Partners (Gen2) is one of the leaders in customised Asian Hedge Funds (HFs) (which includes KS Asia Absolute Return Fund IC and KS Credit Funds) and KS Credit Funds for institutional investors and family offices. Having been recently awarded ‘Thought Leader in Customised Asian Hedge Funds’ and ‘Best Asia Credit Fund 2017: KS Korea Credit Fund’ they reveal more about their work in managing their investors’ exposure to Asia across all Asian alternative strategies. pecifically, within the hedge fund space, what services does your firm offer and how do you tailor these around the needs of individual clients? Gen2 is an independent alternative asset management firm in Asia, offering a range of innovative investment products to investors across the APAC region. Since the firms’ inception it has grown to become among the industry leaders in customised Asian Hedge Funds for institutional investors and family offices, in addition to being a trusted partner to help manage investors’ exposure to Asia across all alternative strategies in the region. Working within such a fast-paced industry, how do you ensure that your firm remains on the cutting edge of new developments and how do you ensure that you are always best placed to meet your clients’ needs? Our culture successfully combines an entrepreneurial partnership structure with a disciplined institutional investment process. We align the interests of the investment team with our investors as much as possible. Another differentiating factor is our proprietary risk management system. This system constantly monitors investment breaches by our portfolio managers. As such, our independent risk monitor firm and in-house risk team together produces monthly risk reports using state of the art risk management system, IMAGINE, that many of global banks and asset managers relying on. Risk teams produce more than 30 different kinds of risk reports per fund and tracks over factors, including VAR (Value at Risk), scenario analysis, sensitivity analysis, cross correlations, underlying asset performance, risk factor exposure (equity, fixed income and country risks), P/L attribution, liquidity analysis, tracking versus our peer group, etc. Company: Gen2 Partners Ltd Email: [email protected] Web: www.gen2ks.com Address: 7702B, 77/F, International Commerce Centre, 1 Austin Road West, Kowloon, Hong Kong Customised Asian Hedge Funds S s Customised Asian Hedge Funds Talk me through the hedge fund industry in your region currently? Are there any specific challenges or outside influences affecting it? Within the Asian investment market, it is critical to keep ahead of emerging trends and developments, and therefore Gen2 Partners regularly communicates with market participants in order to ensure that our information is up to date. We also keep a good network of brokers, who always hold a lot of information on the industry, such as IPOs or how the market is performing. Thus, we operate a strong collaborative approach, which, combined with our risk averse strategy has helped to ensure a strong performance from the fund, and we have made 5% returns over the past 12 months, and despite tough economic conditions across the Asian market. Tell me about your region, and why you believe this is the ideal base for your company? Many alterations to legislation in our region are proving our firm with unique opportunities for growth. One such development is the Korean Government’s changing regulations, which now allow offshore investors greater access to its markets, as well as enabling firms such as mine to easily set up hedge fund businesses within the country. Therefore, moving forward Gen2 Partners is keen to set up a hedge fund management company in Korea, as well as looking for an investment opportunity in an established asset management firm in the country, seeking to become the second largest shareholder in this business. What does the future hold for your business? Are there any specific projects or major developments on the horizon that you would be willing to share with us? We are in the process to set up on-shore hedge fund management firm in Korea to better service Korean institutional clients and potentially bring more talents who can contribute to generate alpha and achieve absolute returns regardless of market directions.