December 13th, 2006
AIMA Japan hosted a pre-Goldman Sachs prime brokerage conference event
on Monday Nov 14, 2005. It was invitation only and had a high profile speaker panel Read the rest of this entry »
October 25th, 2003
1. When did you start your hedge fund and how many people are involved?
We first established an investment firm in May 2002 with two directors, the CEO and myself with 3,000,000 paid-in capital with an intention to evolve into a hedge fund in the future. The CEO worked for Sanyo, Ark and Dongsuh Securities as well as Saison insurance. I have worked for Merrill Lynch, Barclays, Dongsuh, Citigroup and Nikko Securities. The initial activities included investment consulting, development of new investment/trading tools and proprietary trading. In April 2003, we added a third director, formerly a fund manager at one of the largest investment trust & management companies. He joined us to bring in his expertise at fund management and his programming capability to develop equity long/short strategies. We got lucky with another personal contact, and are now sharing office space with another investment firm in central Tokyo. That really helped to save set up costs.
2. How did you know each other and begin a start up in Tokyo?
Read the rest of this entry »
October 20th, 2003
Yoichi Umeki was born and raised in Japan, has studied in Canada, and has worked in New York, Toronto, London and Tokyo. His professional career covers more than 15 years in the derivatives industry, including trading, structuring and sales of FI, FX, Commodity products and Derivatives. Since 1997, he had been the risk manager for Lehman Brothers in Tokyo with market risk management responsibility in all of Asian Fixed Income products. His risk management experiences include analysis of counter party credit risks and dealing with the regulatory issues globally. Recent consulting work includes setting up the risk management
infrastructure for a global Read the rest of this entry »
October 12th, 2003
John Honeyman is responsible for sales of the electronic trading services of CAI Securities in Japan, covering Asian cash equities and equity derivatives, as well as sales of the execution services of CAI’s regional dealing desks handling discretionary client trading for Asia. Prior to joining CAI, John worked for several years in one of the prominent vendors of order management systems, and was responsible for helping penetrate domestic Japanese sell-side accounts. His background is concentrated on technology sales and software project management. He is originally from Chicago, and has lived Read the rest of this entry »
October 3rd, 2003
It is not news to anyone that for the last few years the Japanese investment environment has been extremely difficult to say the least. The opportunities for making traditional money in Japan have been next to nothing and the concurrent downturn in the global markets since late 2000 has only exacerbated the problems facing mainstream Japanese investors. The lack of absolute returns is a problem facing both retail and institutional investors across the board in Japan.
The institutional investors, especially pension funds are starting to reach a critical point in their conservative history. As we are now approaching Read the rest of this entry »
May 25th, 2003
The following are initial investment criteria that buy-side investors typically use to immediately distinguish worthwhile small, new and start-up hedge funds. Hedge fund managers should be aware of these issues and ensure that they are able to satisfy them in order to maximize their ability to attract investment capital.
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Length of common work experience of all core hedge fund team members. Cohesion of an established team – how well do they work together? How well do they divide their labour and Read the rest of this entry »
May 21st, 2003
Okuno & Associates is a consulting and marketing firm specializing in alternative investments. It provides start-up and capital introduction services for global asset managers, including hedge funds, as well as sourcing Japanese transactions for private equity firms.
1. How is the hedge fund environment in Japan with respect to service providers and raising of capital?
While Japan has historically lacked infrastructure for start-up funds, this is beginning to change. Deregulation has eased licensing requirements, the popularity of the asset class has encouraged entrepreneurial fund managers and a growing number of service providers have arrived. Although Japan-focused hedge funds can be found in a wide variety of locations around the world, Read the rest of this entry »
May 17th, 2003
Hedge Funds tend to be classified according to the markets they invest in or the strategies they employ. There is no official classification and the groupings tend to emerge once a large enough number of similar hedge funds are established.
LONG-ONLY LEVERAGED
A traditional equity fund structured like a hedge fund in that it will use leverage to maximize trading ability and will charge a performance fee for the manager.
Read the rest of this entry »
May 15th, 2003
Independent Investment Partners ( IIP ) is a financial consultancy staffed by Japan market specialists assisting foreign financial businesses who do not have a presence in Japan develop business with their target client base in Japan. Clients are fund management firms, including hedge funds, Read the rest of this entry »
May 12th, 2003
We are seeing a greater shift towards general acceptance and interest in Japanese investment in hedge funds. This is hardly surprising given the current market situation where the only investments generating serious absolute returns appear to be hedge funds.
The obvious attraction of hedge funds is however tempered by reservations that have only been reinforced by the recent Eifuku experience. Recent surveys Read the rest of this entry »
