WEST PALM BEACH, FL (HEDGECO.NET) – A former Morgan Stanley analyst, Nam Ki Hong has announced he is launching a new hedge fund; the new fund would have a focus on Asia, particularly Korea. Mr. Hongwas formerly a Korean analyst at Morgan Stanley; he is now a managing partner at Northpoint Investments. The new, soon to be launched hedge fund would be utilizing the long/short strategy for tradingdecisions, according to the released statements.

In his remarks on the new fund, Mr. Hong stated, “We’re not aggressively seeking institutional investment at the moment, although we are open to meeting with institutions and fund-of-funds. Initially we’re keen to focus on our investment process. None of our team members have an institutional long/short track record, so we want to develop this before we roll out the fund to institutions.”

For the past few years, Mr. Hong was the head of Morgan Stanley�s Korean research team, before that Hong was also the head of Merrill Lynch research group for some time as well as a Korean portfolio manager for JP Morgan.

The new hedge fund will have nine team members according to the statement; all nine team members would be involved in the day-to-day trading decisions of the fund. The analysis of investment assets would be dedicated to Korean sectors, the nine team members would be assigned different sectors to analyze and choose the best stocks to invest in. Mr. Hong said the new fund would be an offshore fund, domiciled in Singapore; however the research staff for the new portfolio would be operating from Korea.

The rest of the management team for the new fund includes Peter Elston, a senior partner at Northpoint; he served at Mercury Asset Management for 11 years. Paulo Rhee is also a senior partner at Northpoint, he is an expert in Korean stocks, his other recent jobs include the head of financial sector research with ABN AMRO, according to the statements.

The fund would be seeded with US$5 million according to Mr. Hong, such funding came from the fund�s partners as well as their families. The new fund targets an annual return of 20% before fees; volatility is expected in the range of 10% according to Hong. Goldman Sachs has been selected as the prime broker for the new Northpoint hedge fund, while administrative functions would be performed by Bank of Bermuda. Fee structure for the new fund was not immediately available.

Paul Oranika
Editor-in-Chief
HedgeCo.Net
Email: Editor@hedgeco.net

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