Ascalon Capital Management has entered consolidation mode following the addition of a ninth fund to its stable of boutique managers.
Ascalon, part of Westpac’s BT Group, has taken a 30 per cent equity stake in Singapore-based alternative manager Canning Park Capital.
The announcement is the latest step in Westpac Group’s plan to establish an Asian arm of Ascalon. The Singapore partnership comes only a month after Ascalon bought 30 per cent of Hong Kong-based alternative manager Athos Capital.
However, head of business development Jason Collins said Ascalon was happy to bed down its recent partnerships.
“In the short term, we’re content with our current structure. When you form a new partnership, there’s quite a lot of work to do,” Collins told InvestorDaily.
“We always look at opportunities but we’ve got good partners, we’ve got good, strong net inflows. The business has grown in a sustainable way.”
Ascalon had net flows of about $1 billion over the year to 30 September, Collins said, adding about the half the funds were in alternative investments, such as high-conviction and long-short funds.
Canning Park is a fundamental long-short equity manager that invests across 10 Asian markets, including Australia and Japan. It differentiates itself by combining a fundamental investment approach with a tactical trading overlay to lower the volatility of the portfolio.
In May 2011, Westpac named Chuak Chan its point man in Asia, initially basing him in Hong Kong where he could work on obtaining licensing and regulatory approvals for Ascalon Asia before setting out to find more partners for the business.
