SAC Capital Advisors and Och-Ziff

SAC Capital Advisors and Och-Ziff

Ken Xu, a former managing director at SAC Capital Advisors and Och-Ziff Capital Management Group LLC, raised almost $300 million for his own Hong Kong-based hedge fund, said two people with knowledge of the matter.

BosValen Master Fund started trading on Nov. 3 with money mostly from institutions, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. The fundamental equity long-short fund picks stocks with Asian investment themes, they added.

Katherine Quinn, chief operating officer of Hong Kong-based BosValen Asset Management Ltd., declined to comment, citing regulatory restrictions.

New Asian hedge funds started this year raised on average $21.5 million as of mid-October, according to Singapore-based data provider Eurekahedge Pte. Institutions such as U.S. pensions and foundations are gravitating toward managers trained at global companies and starting with larger teams that can meet their risk-management requirements.

BosValen does not have a seeder, which invests in a young hedge fund for a share of its fee revenue, said the people. Other high-profile startups in Asia this year, such as former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. trader Jason Brown’s Arkkan Capital Management Ltd. and Pleiad Investment Advisors Ltd., founded by two ex-Soros Fund Management LLC Asia specialists, have such backing.

BosValen started with 12 full-time employees. It has three partners including Xu, the chief investment officer, Simon Kemp, head of trading and tactical investments, and Quinn.

Xu spent three years at billionaire Steven A. Cohen’s SAC, now renamed Point72 Asset Management LP, as a Hong Kong-based managing director and fund manager focused on Asia long-short equity investments. He left in May to plan his fund.

He worked for four years at Och-Ziff, and was a managing director co-heading Greater China equity long-short investments before his departure from the firm in October 2010.

Source: Bloomberg