Commentators this month noted on the plight of the Asia-focused emerging managers who cannot raise capital, on the new burdensome technological requirements that new hedge funds have to face, and on the benefits of being small and nimble.

Asia hedge funds shutting down

Asia-focused hedge funds that launched after the 2008 credit crisis are shutting down as a shrinking pool of key investors makes it harder for them to raise capital, said Bloomberg in early March, citing Isometric Investment Advisors and Black's Link Capital which decided to close shop after heavy investor withdrawals.

"All the smaller funds of funds who used to help and family wealth who used to help early managers grow are just not there," said Richard Johnston, Hong Kong-based Asia head of Albourne Partners Ltd., a consulting firm, told Bloomberg. "The gap between seed capital and getting to a good meaningful sustainable size of $500 million plus is a hard gap to plug."

Sadly, Hong Kong-based Triple A recently decided to discontinue its seeding activity due to a lack of investor appetite.

Learn more about Asian start-ups from our last issue of New Managers here: Source.

New technological requirements

New hedge funds, whether or not they manage to get seeding capital from the investment banks which are now venturing into this area, beware; new technological requirements and the post-2008 investment landscape mean the barriers to success are higher than ever, warned ......................

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This article was published in Opalesque's New Managers a top-down monthly analysis, news and research publication on the global emerging manager space.