Max Giant Capital has hired Edward Lashinski and Andy Wong as co-CIOs for its $47m China-oriented global-macro hedge fund, Max Giant Macro Fund, after former CIO for the strategy Kok Kuan Chiah left last month.
Lashinski in a telephone conversation said the changes in the CIO post was planned and smoothly executed after Chiah decided to leave Hong Kong and return to Singapore citing family reasons.
Chiah, who was CIO of the firm since 2015 and has returned to Singapore told Asiahedge he was “taking a break for now before pursuing other interests”.
Besides Chiah, the firm also saw the departure of trader/analyst Liu Sishou after another employee Chia Wei Chen, who was part of the investing team and before that with SG and Goldman Sachs, left two months ago.
The fund, which is part of the Max Giant Group, an asset management company founded in 2014 by banker Katherine Tsang after she retired from Standard Chartered Bank as chairman for Greater China, delivered positive returns in its first three years under Chiah but in the first half of this year lost about 4%. The strategy gained 9.9% last year, 6.68% in 2016 and 0.39% in 2015.
It is understood that the challenging market conditions including the weakening of the Chinese yuan following US rate hikes and the heightening trade tension between China and the US affected the performance of the strategy.
Wong was a former prop trader at China Everbright Securities in Hong Kong and was credited for establishing the group’s market neutral equity trading strategy which he ran for five years. Besides China Everbright, Wong also worked before as a trader in Nomura for 15 years, and also at KGI and Sun Hung Kai.
Lashinski managed and traded over $7bn of global interest rate/bond strategy for investors through the global financial crisis as senior vice president for investments at Prudential Financial in the US. In recent years, he worked in several Hong Kong-based hedge funds including RG Finance, a global macro credit volatility and China factor hedge fund backed by Chinese investors.
With the new appointments sources close to the matter told AsiaHedge that the fund is shifting gear with Wong pursuing an equity-focused multi-strategy approach while Lashinski will run a global macro strategy like what Chiah pursued but will invest in a wider asset classes instead of just FX, bonds and rates.
When he was running the strategy, Chiah focused mostly on FX and interest rates, fixed income instruments and associated derivatives and under Lashinski will pursue the same classic macro strategy using leverage to gain alpha but will attempt to diversify exposures to other types of assets such as commodities.
Max Giant replaces outgoing CIO with dual hires on AsiaHedge.