GLG Partners, the investment manager owned by Man Group, has formed a new long-short equities team based in Hong Kong, through a series of hires. 

The team, which will focus on fundamental stock picking, will be co-managed by David Mercurio, head of Asia equity and co-head of global equity strategies and Ben Freischmidt, risk specialist. Mercurio joined GLG last September from the Government of Singapore Investment Corp, while Freischmidt joined in March this year from Singapore-based LionRock Capital, which he co-founded and helped run as COO.

Reporting to Mercurio and Freischmidt will be four sector specialists: David Walsh, specialising in industrials, Nick Vidale in financials and Sahil Khanna in consumer and TMT. Carl Esprey, the team’s materials specialist, will be based in London.

Walsh joined GLG in April 2012 as a portfolio manager for Asian equities, from Optimal Fund Management where he was most recently a partner, and the Asia-Pacific ex-Japan portfolio manager. Vidale will join GLG in August 2012 as a portfolio manager for Asian equities, from CLSA in Hong Kong, where he was a regional financials sector specialist since 2010. Khanna will also join GLG in August 2012, as a portfolio manager for Asian equities, from Geosphere Capital where he was a senior analyst covering consumer and technology sectors.

Esprey joined GLG in January 2008 in London as a portfolio manager running a global materials and mining book in the European Long Short strategy.

Pierre Lagrange, co-founder of GLG and chairman of Man Asia said: “When we started the European Long Short strategy eleven years ago, the environment in Europe looked very like it does in Asia today, with strong longs and shorts likely to emerge. The new team will seek to capture the returns available from dispersion, based on the same processes we have employed successfully in Europe.”

GLG says its investment philosophy is based on two key principles. The first is to seek to achieve sustainable capital growth through stock picking. The Asian team will run individual books focusing on specific sectors in an effort to generate absolute returns from the most persistent opportunities.

The second is to protect capital through effective risk management. "A robust framework, combining classical risk control and pragmatic active risk management will be applied to the individual books and at an overall strategic level," said GLG.