Asia Frontier Capital (Vietnam) is the Cayman Islands based investment manager of “AFC Vietnam Fund” which has a target size of USD50m and will be available for subscription to qualified new investors as of December 10.
The AFC Vietnam Fund will be managed by Asia Frontier Capital (Vietnam) under the guidance of Andreas Vogelsanger, chief executiver, Andreas Karall, chief investment officer, and Thomas Hugger, chief operating officer.
Asia Frontier Capital said this team has “extensive experience” working in Asia, with its members having held senior positions in firms in Cambodia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Sri Lanka, and Thailand.
According to Vogelsanger, Vietnam’s growth prospects are very compelling, especially with the restructuring of the banking sector and various government stimulus packages to support the economy.
“After a 70%-90 % price decline in the years 2007-2012, we now see enormous upside potential in this new business cycle which has just started and is expected to last for the next five-seven years,” added CIO, Karall.
“About one third out of more than 700 listed Vietnamese stocks have a P/E ratio between 6x and 7x, are trading below book value, many of them have a dividend yield of more than 9% and there are even some companies whose net cash position is almost as high as their market cap.”
Asia Frontier Capital was founded by fund manager and chief executive officer Thomas Hugger after a buy-out of the Leopard Asia Frontier Fund in July.
It recently made two key appointments for its Hong Kong office, hiring Ruchir Desai as senior investment analyst and Stephen Friel as marketing director.
