It’s mid-afternoon on the first Monday of the new year at the LGB Café in Central, Hong Kong, when AsiaHedge first meets Sonia Ponnusamy. Head of investor relations and business development at Senrigan Capital Group, Ponnusamy, has been working with the firm in Hong Kong for just over a year.
During this time, she has been involved with the Hong Kong chapter of 100 Women in Finance, one of the leading affinity organisations for women in the finance and alternative investments industries. The organisation recently held a gala to raise money for local charity, Changing Young Lives Foundation. The event was well supported by the local hedge fund community with sponsoring firms including (but not limited to): BFAM, Marshall Wace, DE Shaw, Blackstone, Goldman Sachs, Grosvenor, Myriad, Oasis, and Point 72.
Local hedge fund support for the event is unsurprising given it was founded in 2001 in New York as 100 Women in Hedge Funds. And two of the three co-founders now reside in Asia – Carol Kim, head of investor relations and business development, Blackstone APAC and Sarah Dyer, APAC director, 100 Women in Finance.
“Globally, the organisation has more than 15,000 members with a small staff and volunteer board. It’s very much an organisation run by the membership with more than 450 global volunteers who implement the mission across 23 locations,” Ponnusamy explains.
For her part, Ponnusamy has two areas of involvement: the Beneficiary Due Diligence Committee and the Gala Committee.
“Time spent working for the organisation is variable. For instance, the Beneficiary Committee focuses intensely during the first quarter to shortlist and rigorously due diligence a handful of Hong Kong-based non-profits,” she says.
“Ultimately, we select one charity to receive a grant to fund a specific programme which spotlights one of three themes: education, mentoring or women’s and family health. In contrast, the Gala involves close to nine months of preparation with the 100WF Asian Industry Leadership Award recipient, guest speaker and venue arrangements made well in advance of the event.”
But, 100 Women in Finance is about more than giving back through philanthropy. Ponnusamy calls it a great resource for supporting women in advancing their careers through education and leveraging relationships through peer engagement, which she says is needed to address the under-representation of women in hedge funds.
A crucial element for success, both for senior women and for the next generation, is to encourage women to be more visible – Sonia Ponnusamy“A crucial element for success, both for senior women and for the next generation, is to encourage women to be more visible – to investors, clients, colleagues and the next generation entering the industry. Within this context, 100WF recently launched a Female Fund Manager visibility campaign. The initiative includes a directory of close to 100 women who own and manage their own funds, including Avenue Capital’s Sonia Gardner and Pictet’s Elif Aktug,” she says.
“Asia continues to lag the US and Western Europe with respect to gender diversity in the workplace and company boards despite the growing body of research which suggests that gender diverse boards result in stronger company performance and more robust governance. Approximately 12% of companies listed on Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index have female representation compared to 27% female representation on the United Kingdom’s FTSE 100 boards,” she adds.
Not that Ponnusamy says things are not moving in the right direction in Asia. As she neatly summarises: “It’s a work in progress. But, we are seeing progress. For hedge funds specifically, you do see quite a lot of women in my seat and an increasing number of female COOs, but for CIOs it’s still a very small percentage.”
Coffee With Sonia Ponnusamy on AsiaHedge.