Kayla Wah, Author at SeaTown

Our Chief Investment Officer, Chi Kit Chai, recently spoke with Georgia Reynolds from EQDerivatives about how SeaTown is developing our investment platform to meet the needs of an increasingly diverse base of global investors.

“The world has changed so much since the multi-asset fund was originally launched. SeaTown needed a new playbook for its public market offerings. Among other things, performance tailwinds from persistently low interest rates are now gone, and critical themes like geopolitics were playing a bigger role in portfolio outcomes than ever before.” Chi Kit said.

At SeaTown, our public equity investment framework is built upon the four key thematic pillars of geopolitics, innovation, socioeconomics and sustainability. We believe these themes will have an outsized influence on shaping the investment landscape of the future.

“We saw an untapped opportunity to leverage our capabilities and create new equity-focused solutions that help global allocators access alpha,” Chi Kit noted.

These developments mark a new chapter in our public market strategies, complementing SeaTown’s established expertise in private markets. With more than $4 billion in assets under management, we remain committed to delivering best-in-class alterative investment solutions to investors globally.

Exciting developments in Asia’s private credit market as fundraising, deal activity and returns have seen a steady rise. Our Deputy CIO and Managing Director, Eddie Ong, recently shared his perspective with Natalie Koh from Pensions & Investments on the unique dynamics shaping private credit across the region.

Eddie discussed how Asia’s bespoke deal structures offer greater flexibility and downside protection compared to developed markets. As he notes, “Now that the rates in the West have started to come off, Asian loans, which are largely short-dated and priced at a fixed rate, are becoming more attractive to investors.”

With $4 billion in assets under management, SeaTown recently closed its second private credit fund at over $1.3 billion, underscoring our commitment to unlocking value in this evolving asset class.

Private debt is growing as an asset class in Asia Pacific (APAC). APAC private credit assets under management grew from $15.4 billion in 2014 to $92.9 billion as of September 2023, according to the latest data from Preqin.

Asset owners familiar with private credit and its risk profile see APAC private credit as a reliable form of diversification in their income allocation.

“The heterogeneity of Asia Pacific markets provides a constant source of deal flow across different countries,” Eddie Ong, our Deputy CIO and Managing Director of Private Investments told Hans Poulsen of AsianInvestor. As Harsha Narayan of Preqin noted, unlike in Europe or North America where private debt is largely focused on solutions very similar to bank loans, Asia Pacific’s markets require innovative and customised credit solutions. As such, asset managers with deep knowledge of local markets can help originate high-quality deals.

Eddie shared that discerning LPs considering investments in private credit typically focus on the downside risks of their investments, and a key concern of LPs is the complexity of enforcing loan protections and securing collateral when things go sour in a region as diverse as APAC.

SeaTown’s private credit team’s experience of being in the APAC credit markets for almost three decades, living through numerous credit crises – such as 1997, 2008, and 2020, provides comfort to investors. We believe that our ability to customize deal structures with comprehensive downside protection mechanisms enables our LPs to capitalise on the wider credit spreads in Asia, while ensuring that collateral and documentation quality is comparable to developed markets.

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