Destination Partners, the outfit spearheaded by former Hillhouse senior analyst Gang Liu, is understood to be launching its flagship Greater China long/short strategy next month.

The strategy has secured several hundred million dollars from a number of investors including those based in the US, sources close to the matter said.

One allocator mentioned that a private equity giant is one of the more significant investors into the fund.

The  strategy will also make private investments. Kevin Lian , an executive director at the firm,  declined to comment on the launch and the investor when contacted.

Allocators told AsiaHedge the strategy is one of the most anticipated offerings this year given the strong backing it’s getting from stablished allocators and the pedigree of its founder and CIO.

The outfit will be based in Hong Kong and will launch ‘in the next few weeks’, according to a source close to the company.

AsiaHedge learned that Destination Partners received its asset management license from the Hong Kong regulator late in March.

Besides Liu, the other managers at the firm are Bill Bai, a former PM at Balyasny Asset Management who also worked before at Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan and Morgan Stanley; and Kevin Lian, a former senior research analyst at Robeco.

The firm’s COO Ines Wu was former COO for Citadel Securities in Asia-Pacific. Prior to joining Destination, she briefly worked the previous year for a Hong Kong Kong-based hedge fund.

Liu left Hillhouse in June last year after working for almost 11 years at the firm. Hillhouse is renowned for having invested early on in companies that later became some of the more successful internet firms in China including among others Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent.

Most of Liu’s years at Hillhouse were spent at the firm’s headquarters in Beijing. According to his LinkedIn account, Liu worked as a managing director for public investment at Hillhouse for more than five years with most of that time spent in Beijing and that his responsibility was tied to a long/short strategy as a senior analyst.

Before that he was an executive director focused on long/short hedge fund with global coverage of industrials, auto, energy and technology sectors. A source close to Hillhouse said Liu managed research and did not make the final investment decisions.

Destination Partners to launch soon on AsiaHedge.