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From Matthias Knab: For many reasons, The Hong Kong Jockey Club (HKJC) is a unique organisation. In 1844, British colonists created the horse race club in an area called “Happy Valley” (as a curious side note, a cemetery is tugged on a hill right beside it.) In 2006, the HKJC has $12.6 billion revenues in horse racing, soccer bets and lotteries. The Special Administrative Region's only legal gambling forum is also Hong Kong’s biggest tax payer; on top the taxes, the club donates $130 million to charity each year. According to the Club's latest published report, $180m of its $4.4bln investment portfolio was in two U.S. based hedge fund of funds. In 2000, the Club started to study hedge funds, making a first allocation to two U.S. hedge FoFs in 2002, being the first of Hong Kong’s institutional investors to move into this strategy. When asked, group treasurer Jacob Tsang said he would envisage that the exposure to alternatives would increase given the increase in size of the overall portfolio and the desire to increase the strategic allocation to alternatives. Furthermore, alternatives would not be just confined to hedge funds. However, there is no plan to invest directly in single strategy hedge funds at this juncture.
Tsang pointed out how hedge funds have changed the investment landscape, forcing traditional managers to “work harder”: “In the last six months, I have not seen a single manager or markets with a plain long only strategy. It is now all about hedge funds, c...................... To view our full article Click here
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