The Hedge Funds Club expands into Australia

Since being founded by Stefan Nilsson in Tokyo in 2005, the Hedge Funds Club has grown into a major international network of hedge fund managers and investors as well as other alternative investment managers.

The Hedge Funds Club is well-established as a social venue and meeting place for the hedge fund industry with regular by-invitation-only networking meetings in Tokyo, Singapore and Hong Kong. Now the Hedge Funds Club will have a meeting in Australia for the very first time, when the Sydney Hedge Funds Club will meet at the Junk Lounge at Cruise Bar Sydney on Tuesday 10th September. It will be a relaxed evening of asset managers and investors catching up with old friends and making new acquaintances. The club is well-known for its low-tech, old-school approach to networking. At this club, it is all about smiles, laughs, eye contact and handshakes. It’s about sharing war stories from the markets and having fun with industry peers.

Stefan Nilsson has been active in the hedge fund and wider alternative investment industry for more than two decades. Currently he is the co-CIO of single family office Terrasias Capital – a hedge fund allocator – and previously he has held many different positions at both funds and service providers, including management roles at JP Morgan and Bear Stearns. “Fifteen years ago, I was the head of the Tokyo office of a global macro hedge fund. Having recently relocated to Tokyo from London, I didn’t know that many people and decided to do something about it. Thus, I launched the Hedge Funds Club as a way to help funds and investors to meet and socialise while at the same time we could also grow and improve the hedge fund community,” says Stefan Nilsson. Interest in the club grew very quickly and the club soon expanded into Singapore and Hong Kong. Now the turn has come to Sydney.

For more than a decade, offshore law firm Ogier has been one of the main sponsors of the Hedge Funds Club in all locations. Nicholas Plowman, Partner at Ogier says: “We’re excited to get this underway in Sydney.” Another major sponsor of the network in recent years has been Sydney-headquartered Invast Global. “We are very excited that the Hedge Funds Club is coming to our home town,“ says Invast Global’s CEO Gavin White. “We have had a long association with the HFC events and it has been a very valuable relationship for us, in many ways. There has been a lot of movement in the asset management space in Australia and we believe there is great potential for the industry to grow strongly as a centre providing world-class asset management with particular expertise in the Asia-Pacific, a part of the world experiencing continued strong economic and demographic growth. We want to help fund managers get established down here and assist them in showing the rest of the world the quality of Asia-Pac managers. Partnering with the Hedge Funds Club to generate interest in Asia-Pac managers seems like a great idea to us.”

The Hedge Funds Club is very much the social side of the alternative investment industry. The networking events have no presentations as the focus is on helping people connect and share ideas and enjoy themselves. Gavin White describes it well: “Invast Global is proud to be a sponsor of this event, Stefan Nilsson. You do a great job organising, promoting, finding the right venue and encouraging the perfect, relaxed atmosphere. You are providing an incredibly valuable service to the Asian hedge fund industry with these events across the region. As always, we will respect the culture you have built where ‘selling’ takes a back seat and the emphasis is on networking, fun and genuinely beneficial conversations. I’m very much looking forward to attending and contributing myself.”

The Sydney Hedge Funds Club’s partners include Ogier, Invast Global, Eurex, Solas Fiduciary Services, CMC Institutional, IG and Spark Plus. Event invites are open to hedge funds and other alternative investment funds, asset managers, prop traders and investors.

More information about the Hedge Funds Club can be found here: www.hedgefundsclub.com