Asian credit hedge fund manager Blue Rice Investment Management to close

November 22, 2013 Leave a comment

Asian credit hedge fund manager Blue Rice Investment Management to close

BY DOUGLAS APPELL | NOVEMBER 20, 2013 3:40 AM | UPDATED 12:45 PM

Blue Rice Investment Management, a hedge fund manager focused on Asian credit, will return capital to investors and close down by the end of 2013. In a telephone interview, Guan Ong, founder and principal of Blue Rice, said the likelihood of a long period of market turbulence as the U.S. Federal Reserve “tapers” its monetary stimulus made “doing the right thing” by investors while they’re still enjoying gains for the year the best option.Mr. Ong said the tough market environment had made it difficult to boost assets under management, which remain under $100 million combined for the firm’s two offerings — an Asian credit strategy and a short-duration strategy.

Mr. Ong launched Blue Rice Investment management in 2009. Asked about his future plans, Mr. Ong, a former chief investment officer of sovereign wealth fund $65 billion Korea Investment Corp., Seoul, said he’d consider his next move after winding down the firm.

Ex-KIC investment chief Guan Ong shutting Blue Rice hedge fund

Nishant Kumar

HONG KONG (Reuters)—Blue Rice Investment Management, founded in 2009 by the former chief investment officer for Korea Investment Corporation, Guan Ong, will return capital by the end of 2013, he told Reuters on Tuesday [Nov. 19], adding to a growing list of fund closings in the region.

The shutdown is part of a shakeout in Asia where smaller-sized hedge funds are increasingly throwing in the towel as they struggle to attract money from risk-wary institutional investors, casting a cloud over prospects of the $141 billion industry in the region.

As many as 263 Asian hedge funds have closed since the start of 2012, eclipsing the 262 launched during the period, according to data from industry tracker Eurekahedge.

“The world is going to be a bit more volatile,” Ong said. “The way our funds are structured, we kind of feel that it’s better for us to return investors’ (capital) when investors are still up.”

Singapore-based Blue Rice managed less than $100 million in September in two fixed-income hedge funds, the BRIM Asian Short Duration Fund and BRIM Asian Credit Fund, according to marketing material obtained by Reuters.

“We have informed all our investors and we are in the process of unwinding all our positions,” Ong said.

Ong declined to disclose details on the performance of his fund, but a letter sent to investors showed his BRIM Asian Credit Fund was down 1.5 percent through end of September this year, following a gain of 8.5 percent in 2012.

Ong worked for the Korean sovereign wealth fund between 2006 and 2009 and when asked about his next career move, he said he was focused on unwinding the portfolio and it was too early to talk about his plans.

Filed under Macro Trends

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Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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