Shuhei Abe, Founder of SPARX: "I never thought I would be running a hedge fund..."

Shuhei Abe is the founder of SPARX Asset Management, Asia's largest hedge fund manager based in Tokyo. Mr. Abe started his career as an equity analyst at Nomura Securities, one of Japan's top brokerage firms. He then spent seven years in America where he worked for George Soros and his Quantum Fund before returning to Japan in 1989. SPARX's mission is to become the most trusted and respected Investment Company in the world. In 2006, the firm rebranded to SPARX Group, which is listed on the Japan OTC Market (JASDAQ).

In this Opalesque BACKSTAGE video, Shuhei Abe recalls how he launched his firm just towards the end of Japan's heydays of real estate and stock bubbles, and how soon thereafter he pioneered into the long-short hedge fund format.

I never thought I would be running a hedge fund after leaving New York, says Abe, but for him adding hedging and shorts to his portfolio was the the solution to stop losing clients' assets during a protracted downtrend. Since then, the long-short format has been widely adopted by other investment management companies for Japan equities.

Apart from expanding into the long-short format, SPARX has further pioneered small cap research in Japan as well as what now knows as shareholder activism. On the corporate side, SPARX expanded beyond Japan by acquiring COSMO Asset Management in Korea (2005) and PMA Investment Management Limited in Hong Kong (2006).

A Green Fund with a Twist

SPARX is currently setting up a new fund managed by Abe himself, which focuses on global opportunities around Smart-Grids. SPARX will not only manage the fund, but will also be actively involved in a project management function in the gestation, deployment and distribution/export of Smart-Grid technologies and know-how. Being embedded into a consortium of Japan's leading research teams and market leading technology companies is a slightly different twist compared to most green technology funds.
[less]

Shuhei Abe is the founder of SPARX Asset Management, Asia's largest hedge fund manager based in Tokyo. Mr. Abe started his career as an equity analyst at Nomura Securities, one of Japan's top brokerage firms. He then spent seven years in America where he worked for George Soros and his Quantum Fund before returning to Japan in 1989. SPARX's mission is to become the most trusted and respected Investment Company in the world. In 2006, the firm rebranded to SPARX Group, which is listed on the Japan OTC Market (JASDAQ).

In this Opalesqu ...more