| HFM: Ex-Morgan Stanley Banker Launches Global Equity Fund in Hong Kong |
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2018
05-30
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to List Jia Zhai, Morgan Stanley’s former top investment banker in Asia for the oil and gas sector, has launched a global long/short equities fund focused on oil and other natural resources.
The fund, Brazos Fund SP, a Cayman-domiciled fund, started trading this month on the OP Investment Management (OPIM) platform in Hong Kong.
The strategy is a combination of proprietary top-down industry research and bottom-up stock-picking.
Zhai, director of Brazos Capital Management, has experience in the natural resources space after working for Morgan Stanley, UBS and Lehman Brothers. He left Morgan Stanley in December last year where he was executive director and Asia Head for Oil and Gas.
Zhai grew up in a coal miner’s family in China and trained as a petroleum engineer. He received his master’s degree in petroleum engineering from Texas A&M University and undergrad in economics and mathematics from Yale and he is a member of the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE).
Zhai said that Asian investors often under-appreciate and underweight the sector for a variety of reasons.
“Commodities and resource equities are well positioned to outperform most other asset classes going into the second half of the year given rising US rates, inflation and late-cycle environment,” said Zhai. “We want to use our industry expertise to help our clients get access to high-quality global resources opportunities otherwise unavailable in Hong Kong or other Asian markets.”
Alvin Fan, the chief executive officer at OP Investment Management, said: “Zhai’s reputation precedes him having been in the frontline of deal-making in the resources sector through multiple industry cycles. Resources is not an easy sector for generalists, and investors will appreciate accessing this space through a focused sector strategy and an industry expert.”
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