Aquitaine’s portfolio of products distributed to investors in the region represents the best of breed for each alternative strategy. Aquitaine also structures alternative products based upon its clients’ requirements, including risk/return parameters, liquidity, currency, reporting frequency, domicile and tax considerations.

Aquitaine matches the investor to the alternative product, and in the process, ensures that all aspects of the fund are transparent to the investor. After placement, Aquitaine places great emphasis on providing post-allocation support to institutional investors in the represented funds, ensuring that these investors receive response to all queries on their portfolio in this time zone.

It should be noted that Aquitaine is not a third party marketer (TPM) or “an introducer” - a TPM generally works “on spec” usually travelling to the region on a regular basis without a physical presence. A long distance TPM is no longer sufficient (or in most cases legal) for marketing to institutional investors in these markets for two reasons: 1) the regulatory authorities in the region require institutional investors to allocate to funds that have licensed representation physically in the region and 2) Asia’s institutional clients require a representative of a product in the region to be accountable to the regulators. Clients are also increasingly demanding access to manager information in their own time zone and language.

Additionally, the non-dedicated nature of TPMs and introducers usually involves little or no post-placement support, poor information flow and therefore little client loyalty. The TPM/introducer approach usually means that clients’ requirements are not matched to product: this means that it is an inefficient marketing approach prone to product mis-information and one that is likely to tarnish the manager’s brand name in the region.

If you are a manager of an alternative strategy fund and wish to explore the possibilities of representation in Asia, please contact us at info@aquitaine.com.hk. Aquitaine experiences continuously changing investment requirements from its Asian investors, and therefore is constantly seeking new and compelling alternative funds and managers.

If you are an Asian-based institutional or qualified investor and wish to look at our current portfolio of products represented and supported in the region, please contact us at info@aquitaine.com.hk.