Cambridge to lift Asian presence with Beijing office

Cambridge Associates, the US-based asset consultancy, is to open a Beijing office – its third office in the Asia Pacific region – and is sending a private equity specialist there from London.

The Beijing office, to be run by UK managing director Christopher Hunter from the middle of next year, supplements the established Singapore and Sydney offices.

Sandra Urie

Sandra Urie (pictured), Cambridge’s chief executive, intends to spend about four months in the first half of next year working out of the Singapore office to help establish the China presence.

She said: “We are serving a growing group of Asia-based clients including endowments, sovereign wealth funds, government funds, family offices and other institutional investors. Another strong on-the-ground presence in the region will not only help us anticipate and serve our Chinese clients’ needs but is also key to the evolution of our research and due diligence activities on behalf of all our clients around the world.”

Cambridge, which is particularly strong in research of alternative asset classes and which has a big share of the endowments advisory market, has recently produced several papers on topics such as Chinese private equity, Asian hedge funds and distressed investing in Asia.

Sponsored Content

Leave a Comment

Sort content by

Agent provocateur

Paul Smith, the Hong Kong based chief executive of the Global CFA Society is on an evangelical mission to change the culture within the investment industry. Not only is he looking to curb the frequency of excess behaviour that leaves the public cynical of high paid finance professionals, but he is a persuasive advocate for

Do long-term mandates produce better results?

About 11 years ago, the Towers Watson’s Thinking Ahead Group came up with the concept of investors appointing managers for 10-year mandates. The consulting arm then started talking to clients about it in 2004/05 and the early mandates have now matured. So did it work? Do longer-term mandates produce outperformance, better behaviour and more security?

GRESB infrastructure launch

A new infrastructure sustainability benchmark has been developed by a group of eight institutional investors, alongside GRESB, to enable systematic evaluation and industry benchmarking of the sustainability performance of their infrastructure assets.   Despite large and widespread allocations by Canadian and Australian pension funds to infrastructure, institutional investors globally do not have large allocations to

Frozen by the entanglement of risk

Equity prices in continental Europe and emerging markets, including China, are below fair value, and present an opportunity for investors, but the ‘entanglement of risk’ in current markets is making Brian Singer, partner and head of dynamical allocation strategies team, William Blair cautious. William Blair typically targets around 10 per cent volatility in its portfolios,

Exchanges need to adapt to institutional demands: Norges

Institutional investors now dominate the free float holdings of listed companies and exchanges need to adapt to this enduring change in market structure and investor needs, according to Norges Bank Investment Management, manager of the $818 billion Norwegian sovereign wealth fund. Norges Bank, which itself owns around 1 per cent of the world’s listed stock,

Dalio says Fed should focus on secular forces

The US Federal Reserve is not paying enough attention to secular forces affecting the market, according to chairman and founder of Bridgewater, Ray Dalio, who says the “risks of the world being at or near the end of its long-term debt cycle are significant”. In an opinion piece posted on LinkedIn, The Dangerous Long Bias

Previous