From being a financial journalist to becoming one of the leading practitioners of value investing in Asia, Cheah Cheng Hye, chairman and co-CIO of Value Partners, has an inspiring tale. In a fireside-style chat with Morningstar’s Jeffrey Ptak, Cheah shared his personal journey on how he built his investment career and co-founded one of the most well-recognized asset managers in the region and discuss the lessons he learned along the way.
Jeffrey Ptak, Morningstar’s director of manager research talked about the takeaways from his conversation with Cheah in following video.
Jeff Ptak: There were three key takeaways from my conversation with Deto’ Cheah, the chairman of Value Partners Group. The first was that, there is real value, in having a defined investment culture, and maintain that over time. The second was that investment culture is not a static thing. It’s a living breathing thing that one has to iterate on.
And the third was, we are in the moment, in the region, in terms of seizing opportunities, they are available to firms like Value Partners Group and one has to thoughtful about how to strike the appropriate balance between committing to a particular investing identity, and seizing those opportunities, investing for growth in the future…… take those one by one.
Value Partners Group really made the investors front and center and made value investing its hallmark, and stuck to that thick and thin, it makes them a bit of anomaly, in the region, in many regards.
The second takeaway was that they were not able to commit themselves to a static approach, a static process, they iterate on their investment culture, made modifications to their staff, to ensure that they could grow the business and they could scale it over time. So culture is a living breathing thing and has to be maintained.
The third takeaway was this is a pivot juncture for Value Partners Group and other investment managers, given the potential growth from China. The key thing to watch will be to ensure that they are sticking to their knitting, their investment culture; while at the same time seeking partners that can help them take advantage of the opportunities. It’s something that bears watching. Three key takeaways from the Morningstar Institutional Conference.
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