Former members of the Macquarie Asian Equities team have set up Stonehorn Global Partners and launched its new billion-dollar Asia Equity Fund. Also the firm would be joined by co-founders Duke Lo and John Lam who previously worked for 10 years together, managing over $4 billion.
The new entity would be headed by Sam Le Cornu and backed by Australia’s Trawalla Capital.
The new fund would have a disciplined investment process and would be unconstrained (benchmark, sector, country and market-cap agnostic). It would hold approximately 30 stocks in MSCI Asia ex-Japan.
The fund would be based on-the-ground in Hong Kong to better leverage the team’s local networks, language skills and high-level access to Asia’s leading companies, the firm said.
“Our investment approach is the same as what we did in the last decade” Lam said.
“The principles behind how we organize ourselves are also the same. What will be different this time is the environment, market inefficiencies will always exist, and all it really does is further set apart the good managers from the mediocre.”
Trawalla Capital, is a private investment firm of the Melbourne-based Schwartz Family Office, headed by Alan and Carol Schwartz. Trawalla Capital would be also a shareholder in Stonehorn and a significant investor in the inaugural fund.
“Stonehorn Global Partners will be Trawalla Capital’s third portfolio company complementing Qualitas, a real estate investment management firm and Armitage Associates, a growth equity firm,” MrSchwartz said.
“We are therefore delighted to be partnering with Sam, John and Duke. They are established leaders who are proven in their field, whose values and approach are strongly aligned with our own.”
The fund would initially be open to investment from institutional and wholesale investors in Asia, Europe and Australia, including high net-worth individual investors, family offices and institutions.
It would be expected to be open to institutional and wholesale investors in April-June 2019, the firm said.
