After Career at UBS and Citigroup, Emmanuel Starts Hedge Fund

After Career at UBS and Citigroup, Emmanuel Starts Hedge Fund

By: Bei Hu, Bloomberg | 30 Nov 2015

Jeff Emmanuel is breaking into the hedge-fund industry after a career spanning equity research, deal making and investment banking at Citigroup Inc. and UBS Group AG.

Emmanuel’s Hong Kong-based EFM Asset Management started trading a global stock fund on Nov. 11 with about $20 million of his own money and will open the pool to outside investors on Jan. 1, he said in a telephone interview. The fund will focus on companies that can sustain double-digit annual revenue growth. Instead of wagering against individual stocks, it will take bearish bets against equity indexes to protect against potential declines, Emmanuel said.

Emmanuel joins the ranks of bankers and traders leaving global financial firms to move into the money-management business. Former Societe Generale SA traders led by Jong Beum Kim are scheduled to start trading a new hedge fund on Nov. 30 after striking out on their own. EFM is also part of a growing group of Asia-based asset managers, including Tybourbe Capital Management (HK), that are using their expertise in the region to invest worldwide amid Asia’s growing influence over global supply and demand, from commodities to manufactured goods.

“Being so close to China, we feel we get a much better input into macro drivers as China becomes increasingly important to the world economy,” said Emmanuel. “Certainly from the portfolio-protection side and also in being able to identify companies in Asia, we’re in the right time zone."

Concentrated Pool

EFM will pick stocks using fundamental research, building a concentrated pool of investments made up of 20 to 30 companies, Emmanuel said. It plans to maintain a 50 percent to 100 percent net long position, he added, referring to the difference between bullish and bearish bets.

Emmanuel started the firm with Martin Warwick, a non-executive director of Templeton Global Growth Fund Ltd., an investment firm listed on the Australian Stock Exchange. EFM plans to add four analysts over the coming months, expanding staff to about 10, he said.

Emmanuel, a former banking analyst at Merrill Lynch & Co. and UBS in Australia, rose to head the Swiss bank’s equities business in the country. He moved to Hong Kong in 2010 as a managing director of the financial institutions group of UBS’s investment banking arm. Citigroup hired him the following year as a managing director of its Asia-Pacific financial institutions group and vice-chairman of Australia and New Zealand global banking, according to a statement dated April 2011