3 Asian Value Investors You Need To Know
3 Asian Value Investors You Need To Know
Knowing how successful value investors have made it in the past is important for us. It helps us understand what are some of the common characteristics among these great investors. However, most of the famous investors that are well publicised are US-based and Europe-based investors like Warren Buffett, Peter Lynch or Sir Templeton.
Nevertheless, there are many great Asian value investors. Many of them have successfully built a great fund management business here in Asia. Here are three great value investors that you need to know.
Hong Kong – Value Partners Limited
Dato’ Seri Cheah Cheng Hye is the co-founder of Value Partners Group Limited (HK: 0806), the largest local fund management firm in Hong Kong. Dato’ Seri Cheah has a classic rags-to-riches story. He was born in Penang, Malaysia in 1954. When he was young, he started out working as just a newspaper folder in Malaysia. Later on, he went on to have a journalism career.
He changed his career to the financial industry in 1989 when he joined UK-based brokerage Morgan, Grenfell & Co as the head of research. In 1993, he setup Value Partners Group with Mr. Yeh V-Nee. Today, Value Partners managed more than US$14.0 billion. More impressively, his flagship fund has returned an annualised 14.9% for the past 24 years for its investors.
Dato’ Seri Cheng has made a name for himself as the China expert investors, breaking through new grounds with investing in mid and small-caps Hong Kong Stocks, the A-Shares and B-Shares in China.
Here is one of the speeches he gave during the London Value Investor Conference in 2015.
Malaysia – Pheim Asset Management
Dr. Tan Chong Koay is the founder of Pheim Asset Management. He is one of the pioneers in building us the fund management industry in Malaysia. Since founding the company in 1994, he has created multiple record-breaking funds and won a great number of investment awards in his industry.
Dr. Tan adopted a strong investment philosophy of seeking out stocks that are trading below its intrinsic value. He looked for companies with good management, high margins, and strong growth. With his strategy, Phiem Asset management has pushed many of its funds to the best performing funds within the industry. In recent years, his firm has won the best ASEAN Emerging Companies Fund, for the 15-year and 20-year periods in 2016 by MorningStar. The fund, Pheim SICAV-SIF has returned more than 352% for the 20-year period compared to the 1.62% of the benchmark.
At his peak, Dr. Tan managed close to US$2.0 billion in asset under management. Although he has faced some setback due to a lost civil action against the Monetary Authority of Singapore, his long-term track record is undeniable. This put him at the top among the greatest Asian investors of our time.
Singapore- Target Asset Management
Outside of the financial industry, not many people would have heard of Target Asset Management. However, this boutique investment firm in Singapore has produced one of the best track records in the past two decades. Its founder, Mr. Teng Ngiek Lian, started the business in 1996. Since then, it focuses on equity investment in the Asian Markets.
Mr. Teng was previously a managing director for Morgan Grenfell Investment and UBS Asset Management before setting up Target Asset Management. From his company presentation, it showed us that the firm has a clear investment philosophy and strategy in investing in Asia. He believed each company would have an intrinsic value to its business. Therefore, the firm would invest in companies trading cheaply against its intrinsic value. Moreover, the firm follows a bottom-up approach in selecting companies. It sets its sight on:
- Companies in early growth industries
- Fallen angels or out-of-favour industries
From those sectors, Mr. Teng would look for companies with 5 rights:
- Right business
- Finding the Right management
- Right financial & valuation
- Getting the Right risk vs. reward ratio
- Right stock liquidity
From its inception to his first retirement in 2010, Mr. Teng has generated more than 17% in annualised returns during the 14-year period. This made Mr. Teng one of the greatest investors in Asia.
Summary
We are able to find great value investors from anywhere around the globe. Thus, this makes the philosophy of value investing truly global. As we seen here, these three investors from Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia, are some of the greatest investors in Asia.
Do you know of any great value investors in Asia that we should feature? Comment below and let us know.
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About The Author
Stanley Lim, CFA
Stanley Lim has spent the last decade in the investment industry. Over the course of his career, he has kick-started a few businesses, worked in the family office industry and most recently in the investment advisory industry. He has been a writer and analyst for The Motley Fool Singapore from 2013 to 2017. He has written close to 2000 articles online, on investment education and market analysis. He is the co-writer of the investment book: “Value Investing In Asia”, published in 2018. Stanley is currently the chief editor of Value Invest Asia.