Three former managing directors of Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s Japan business plan to start an Asia multi-strategy hedge fund early next year, according to two people with knowledge of the matter.
Koji Gotoda and Takayuki Kasama have incorporated Golvis Investment Pte in Singapore, said the people, who asked not to be identified as the information is private. The fund will invest in all asset classes with an initial focus on Japan, they added.
Japan-focused hedge funds have historically traded stocks, making a company staffed by a large team of former Goldman Sachs employees and capable of investing in multiple asset classes a rarity, one of the people said. The New York-based bank, once Wall Street’s most profitable securities firm, generated about half of its revenue from trading last quarter.
“The pedigree of the principals will guarantee they at least get a good hearing from prospective allocators,” Peter Douglas, principal of Singapore-based GFIA Pte, which advises on hedge-fund investments. “After many years of slow death or exile for the Japanese hedge fund industry, it does feel as if the industry, like the country, could be on the verge of a renaissance.”
Gotoda most recently led Asia convertible bond trading at Goldman Sachs before leaving in July, said the other person. Kasama, a former co-head of Japan credit trading, left the New York-based bank in June. Both were among 272 promoted to managing directors in 2009, according to an internal memo at that time.
Nine of the about 11 initial Golvis employees will have worked at Goldman Sachs, including a third former managing director, said the people.
Ryan Collins, Golvis’s head of business development, declined to comment on the plans in an e-mail. Goldman Sachs’s Tokyo-based spokeswoman, Hiroko Matsumoto, confirmed that Gotoda and Kasama have left the firm and said she couldn’t make any further comment.
Gotoda will present his plan to potential investors at Goldman Sachs’s annual Asia hedge fund symposium in the city- state in October, according to an invitation seen by Bloomberg.
Stimulus by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and the Bank of Japan to break two decades of stagnation has weakened the yen by 19 percent in the past year and helped double profit of Nikkei 225 Stock Average companies last quarter by making its exports more competitive abroad.
“For once the government, the bureaucracy, the corporates and the public are all pulling on the proverbial rope in the same direction,” said Stephane Pizzo, managing partner of Singapore-based investment adviser Lotus Peak Capital Pte.