Coupland Cardiff AM hires Jonathan Asante for EM team

Asante, who was managing partner at Stewart Investors until 2019, will be joined by former team members Chris Grey, Joanna Kay, Tom Prew and Dominic St George.

Stewart Investors is part of First Sentier (formerly First State Investments), which was acquired by Japanese fund giant MUFG.

This merger saw Asante depart while the rest of the team remained, but that part of the business was closed in 2022, leading to the rest of the team joining CCAM immediately.

The Asian equity boutique manages $2bn of Asian equities on behalf of global consultants, institutions and professional investors.

St George will be working from the US with the UK based team, with Grey, Prew and St George all having been senior analysts and lead managers.

Kay, a former Stewart Investors board member, will head up the non-investment aspects of the business.

Asante and his team will continue to pursue their investment philosophy, which was developed by him during his time as emerging markets funds manager at AXA Framlington in 2001.

CCAM added that the team will look to launch UCITS and Cayman funds this year, as well as managed accounts.

James Tollemache, chief executive of CCAM, said: “Jonathan and the team have demonstrated their investment process can deliver across several emerging market cycles and it has been used in a variety of ways by investors.

“It is gratifying that we can give investors access to this dynamic team once more within the environment we have at CCAM, based on ownership and partnership.”

He said: “Emerging markets are evolving constantly, and we believe we have the right team, in the right environment, to deliver an emerging market equity proposition that will stand the test of time.”

Asante himself added: “We have learned that our investment philosophy, focused on preserving clients’ money in order to grow it better in the long term, is simple to understand but hard to implement. 

“Having spent considerable time looking for the right long-term partner with the appropriate institutional structure, we feel fortunate to have found this in Coupland Cardiff Asset Management.”

He added: “We have spent decades developing an approach of how best to both encourage and benefit from material improvements in the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people around the world from Asia to Latin America and Africa and we consider it a privilege to be able to offer this to clients once again.”