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Matthews Asia - New CEO

edited July 2022 in Fund Discussions
Several prominent fund managers and the CIO exited Matthews Asia since 2020.
Bill Hackett, the CEO for 13 years, retired on June 30, 2022.

From the July M* FundInvestor newsletter:

"Cooper Abbott joined Matthews International Capital
Management as CEO on June 13, 2022, succeeding
Bill Hackett, who had served as CEO for 13 years and
is retiring on June 30. This development is unsur-
prising, because Matthews announced in December
2021 that Hackett was planning on retiring in
mid-2022 and that a search was underway for
his replacement."


"Abbott has more than 20 years of senior investment
management experience. He previously served
as president and chairman at Carillon Tower Advisors
(where he led that firm’s acquisitions of several
asset managers during his tenure) and as executive
vice president of investments and co-chief operating
officer at Eagle Asset Management (which is an affil-
iate of Carillon Tower Advisors)."

Comments

  • edited August 2022
    Word on the street is that Bill Hackett was asked politely to retire, or in otherwords, he was fired. Matthews has lost more than 10 portfolio managers in the last 2 years, and no, they aren't people retiring but rather the up and coming, next generation portfolio managers that got tired of poor leadership of the firm. Tiffany Hsiao, Beini Zhang, Lydia So, Raymond Deng, Rahul Gupta are just a few names. Just last month, Teresa Kong head of fixed income, also left. This exodus of talent is unprecedented and something I've never seen in my career from a small boutique.

    Per their website, Matthews Asia's assets stood at $17.2 billion as of July 2022. I was in their offices in 2017/2018 and their assets were nearly $35 billion. I've heard from portfolio managers at the company that most of the drop in assets are due to outflows (clients redeeming), not markets.

    It sounds like Cooper was brought in to try and turn things around. He has a tough job ahead of him. Besides massive outflows, the performance of the funds has been horrible. Their flagship, Pacific Tiger has underperformed its benchmark for nearly the last 5 years. Two of their other big funds, Innovators and Asia Growth, were heavily loaded with tech names and took huge hits with the latest correction.

    https://www.matthewsasia.com/funds/mutual-funds/asia-growth/pacific-tiger-fund/?FundClassType=MIPTX

    Matthews fall from grace has been sad to see. I met with their founders years ago and loved their passion for Asia and entrepreneur spirit. But that energy left the firm many years ago, and the firm has become mediocre at best. I wish Cooper luck, but its a steep mountain to climb and competitors have really stepped up their game in both Asia and EM. Matthews is not the only trick in town anymore.


  • @ProtonAnalyst33,

    Thanks for your detailed commentary!
    It's sad to witness the turn of events for this once estimable firm.
  • i concur. and i had not heard about teresa kong's leaving. where did she go? does anyone know? I will take a look.....

    ...Found this. RETIRING???? She can't be that old.....
    https://citywireselector.com/news/a-rated-bond-boss-to-exit-matthews-asia/a2391349
    Or is the word being used here in a non-standard way?
  • edited August 2022
    Crash said:

    i concur. and i had not heard about teresa kong's leaving. where did she go? does anyone know? I will take a look.....

    ...Found this. RETIRING???? She can't be that old.....
    https://citywireselector.com/news/a-rated-bond-boss-to-exit-matthews-asia/a2391349
    Or is the word being used here in a non-standard way?

    Exactly. All the portfolio managers that left have been Teresa's age or younger. Firm has lost an entire generation of leaders on the investment team. Teresa is not that old herself, she's <50 years old if I had to guess? It's a really bad sign.

    Looking at the direction of the company, its not a surprise. Why stay on the proverbial sinking ship when your skill set is in high demand? Having felt the change there over the years, I'm not sure why matthews didn't make a leadership change sooner at the top. It almost seems too late at this point. You all might remember they brought in some outside leaders, but they ended up resigning or leaving after very short stints. Yu Ming Wang famously joined in 2020 as Global CIO/President, but resigned within 9 months. That is also a really bad sign and highly unusual. Actually I've never heard of such a thing happening.

    https://www.pionline.com/money-management/matthews-asias-presidentglobal-cio-resigns

  • Exactly. All the portfolio managers that left have been Teresa's age or younger. Firm has lost an entire generation of leaders on the investment team. Teresa is not that old herself, she's <50 years old if I had to guess? It's a really bad sign.

    Looking at the direction of the company, its not a surprise. Why stay on the proverbial sinking ship when your skill set is in high demand? Having felt the change there over the years, I'm not sure why matthews didn't make a leadership change sooner at the top. It almost seems too late at this point. You all might remember they brought in some outside leaders, but they ended up resigning or leaving after very short stints. Yu Ming Wang famously joined in 2020 as Global CIO/President, but resigned within 9 months. That is also a really bad sign and highly unusual. Actually I've never heard of such a thing happening.</i>

    https://www.pionline.com/money-management/matthews-asias-presidentglobal-cio-resigns

    @ProtonAnalyst33

    Hmmmmmm...... Through thick and thicker for all these years, Robert Horrocks remains. Is something he's doing driving everyone away?
  • edited August 2022
    Crash said:


    Hmmmmmm...... Through thick and thicker for all these years, Robert Horrocks remains. Is something he's doing driving everyone away?

    Good question. He is still the CIO.
  • Crash said:


    Hmmmmmm...... Through thick and thicker for all these years, Robert Horrocks remains. Is something he's doing driving everyone away?

    Where there's smoke, there's usually fire. It is odd, especially since performance of nearly all their funds has really deteriorated.

    It does smell a bit of entrenched management.
  • Crash said:


    Hmmmmmm...... Through thick and thicker for all these years, Robert Horrocks remains. Is something he's doing driving everyone away?

    Where there's smoke, there's usually fire. It is odd, especially since performance of nearly all their funds has really deteriorated.

    It does smell a bit of entrenched management.
    ***Ding!

    Years ago, I was a shareholder. I got out long before the whole operation, as it were, went so far south, so fast.
  • Crash said:


    ***Ding!

    Years ago, I was a shareholder. I got out long before the whole operation, as it were, went so far south, so fast.

    Yes, I did the same. Have you read the Morningstar report by William Samuel Rocco on Cooper's hire? It's terribly un-insightful for a supposed experienced fund analyst. He misses everything we've discussed in this thread, the really important stuff between the lines.
  • Figures. They do not want to alienate anyone. My exit from Matthews was after a dreadful experience with one of the fund managers or team members on the phone, after an expected dividend simply did not happen. (MAPIX.) That was a handful of years ago, now. In answer to my question, he READ a PREPARED statement. I'm sure I was not the first one to call and inquire about WTF happened.... I thought (and I SAID to him:) "Why would you READ to me from a script? It sounds like you're reading to me from a script." And he answered: "Yes, I AM reading to you from a script." And I said: "why don't you just talk to me like a human being?" THAT'S when he got angry, and told me I could sell my shares if I wanted to do it. I did.
  • edited August 2022
    I remember that missed MAPIX quarterly in 12/2014 and I explained it to others at M* at the time (-:). It was due to the weird US PFIC tax consideration that required mark-to-market (or, flow-through-earnings) of some foreign property and hard asset holdings. MAPIX held some property co then and its distributions are lumpy because of this PFIC (for the US investors).

    It is the same issue that the US investors face with many Canadian natural-resources funds or European income funds. Unrelated, but Warren Buffett has a similar accounting problem with his Q2 this time in that the accounting rules require mark-to-market for BRK stock portfolio.

    So, the investors should know about PFIC and mark-to-market accounting.

    Anyway, that call was poorly handled by Matthews.
  • Yes, @yogibearbull. That was it, precisely. I wish I understood the ins-and-outs of all that stuff. What that fellow was reading to me simply did not offer me any explanation. It was all professional jargon.
  • edited December 2023
    The exodus at Matthews Asia continues...

    Sharat Schroff will leave Matthews Asia at the end of the month.
    He joined the firm in 2005 and comanaged Matthews Pacific Tiger and Matthews India.
    It was also disclosed that Taizo Ishida and John Paul Lech left Matthews Asia on December 19.
    They joined the firm in 2006 and 2018 respectively.

    "Speaking to Citywire Selector regarding these most recent changes, Cooper Abbott said:
    ‘Since my arrival at Matthews, we have made some changes, all with the goal of improving
    investment results for our clients. A strong investment culture seeks to continually strengthen
    investment focus and outcomes. That is what we are doing. Recent investment personnel
    terminations are testament to Matthews’ dedication to investment results, making changes
    where they are necessary to drive long-term alpha.'"

    Article below may be paywalled.
    https://citywire.com/selector/news/matthews-asia-s-pacific-equity-fund-under-review-as-veteran-exits/a2432941
  • edited December 2023
    I had MAPTX and MACSX for almost a decade, They were the go to guys for Investing in Asia. The funds did good for a while, then was so so.. I decided to get out of these just last month, and rather go in a broad Emerging Market Index fund instead so that it is more than Asia.
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