Our guest for today’s podcast is Vishal Bhutani, Chief Investment Officer of AMS Children’s Fund (AMS), a new fund launching in early 2025. Together with David Gaynes, Vishal is forming AMS to capitalize on the growing interest by institutional investors in the Indian equity markets. Vishal believes that the middle market opportunity in Indian equities is one of the best investment opportunities available today. Leveraging his experience as an event driven portfolio manager, AMS believes it will be able to achieve superior risk adjusted returns.

Vishal has spent the bulk of his 20 year investment career as an Event Driven investor, investing across the capital structure. Joining me on the podcast is Clark Cheng, CEO and CIO of Merrimac Corp, a large single family office with investments in hedge funds, private equity, venture capital and real estate AND David Gaynes, co-founder of AMS Children’s Fund.

So why should investors care about the Indian equity markets now? Vishal provides many insights and answers why in this podcast.

Without further ado, here is our conversation with Vishal Bhutani.

Our guest for today’s podcast is Darren Xu, Co-Founder and Portfolio Manager of Questline
Capital. Questline Capital is a long/short equity fund focused on the gaming, media and
communications sectors. After almost a decade as an investor at Farallon Capital Management,
Darren decided to leave his job and will be launching his fund in the 1 st quarter of 2025.
Darren started his career in investment banking in Mergers and Acquisitions at Citigroup after
graduating with two degrees, one in Computer Science from the University of Pennsylvania and
the other in Business from the Wharton School.

I named this podcast “Living the dream: playing video games for fun and for work.” Literally,
that is what Darren does. How fun is that? So, how does one create a career playing video
games. Well, we are here to find out.

Without further ado, here is our conversation with Darren Xu.

Our guest for today’s podcast is Dave Lu, Managing Partner of Hyphen Capital, an early stage venture capital firm focused on Asian American founders. Dave is a veteran of the technology industry, having founded two prior companies: Expo and Fanpop, as well as having worked at Apple, eBay, Cisco, Yahoo and Sony. Dave produced the Emmy-winning HBO documentary 38 at the Garden about Jeremy Lin. Amidst the rise of anti-Asian hate during the pandemic, Dave led a movement with an open letter signed by 8,000 leaders including President George Bush and the CEOs of Google, DoorDash, Zoom and others that was published in the Wall Street Journal and launched Stand with Asian Americans. Dave sits on the advisory board of the Smithsonian Asian Pacific Center and the Asian Pacific Fund. Dave received his MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and his BA from the University of Pennsylvania.

To say that Dave is a role model would be an understatement. I applaud Dave for his selfless efforts to help inspire and galvanize change for the AAPI community.

Without further ado, here is our conversation with Dave Lu.

Our guest for today’s podcast is Raymond Chan, Partner at Atalaya Capital Management, a leading private credit firm. Ray is responsible for the firm’s investing in Financial Assets, which focuses on sourcing and executing specialty finance and other private asset-backed transactions. Prior to joining Atalaya, Ray was a Partner and Co-Founder of TTM Capital, LLC, an investment firm focused on acquiring and lending against portfolios of financial and other assets. Previously, he was a Managing Director and co-head of the Assets Group at Highbridge/Zwirn Capital Management.

Earlier in his career, Ray was a member of the Principal Transaction and Principal Finance teams at Lehman Brothers and worked on numerous securitizations across multiple asset classes at Salomon Brothers. He began his career as a consultant at Price Waterhouse, followed by internal consulting and operations roles at Lehman Brothers. He holds a BA in Economics and Political Science from Columbia University.

As our podcast listeners know, I have a bias for featuring successful Columbia alumni, my alma mater. Ray’s success hits home for me as I knew him as a peer over 30 years ago and I am so happy for all the contributions he is making for the AAPI community, both professionally in his firms’s support of AAAIM and personally as a Board Member for Apex For Youth.

Without further ado, here is our conversation with Ray Chan.

Our guest for today’s podcast is Tem Tumurbat, Co-founder and Managing Partner of Nomadic Venture Partners (NVP), where he focuses on fund strategy, fundraising, portfolio construction, valuation, and financial analysis.

Prior to co-founding NVP, Tem was an investment professional at Resource Capital Funds (RCF), a mining focused private equity investment firm, managing early to late stage investments. He de-risked companies, commercialized their businesses and successfully completed M&As that delivered hundreds of millions of dollars to investors.

Prior to RCF, Tem worked for Newmont Mining Corporation as a mining engineer and then project engineer. Tem also co-founded MNG Summit, a non-profit organization supporting Mongolian students and early career professionals.

Tem started his professional career as an entrepreneur where he started and operated a transportation company in college to help pay for college tuition and support extended family.

I found Tem’s story to be fascinating. Joining me on the podcast and my guest co-host is Brian O’Neil, former CIO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and long time supporter of AAAIM.

Without further ado, here is our conversation with Tem Tumurbat.

Our guest for today’s podcast is Glenn Hosokawa, Director of Fixed Income at CalSTRS. After over 25 years serving CalSTRS, Glenn will be retiring at the end of August 2024 and riding off into the sunset. If you google or search for Glenn’s biography, you won’t be able to find anything. I tried. Glenn is as old school as they come and doesn’t have a social media profile.

For those that know Glenn, he is credited for building a world class Fixed Income investment division at one of the most admired places to work. Glenn isn’t looking for any accolades as he just enjoyed coming in, day in day out, working hard to generate returns to help secure the retirement benefits of all the great teachers that serve the State of California. Great mission, great guy, great career.

So who is Glenn and what is he known for? Well, Glenn was gracious enough to share his story with me and my guest co-host Sylvia Owens from Kennedy Lewis Investment Management.

Without further ado, here is our conversation with Glenn Hosokawa.

Our guest for today’s podcast is Gino Reina, Principal at SECOR Asset Management. Gino is a portfolio manager and member of the client advisory team at SECOR, responsible for client relationship management and business development. Gino has over 20 years of investment management industry experience, including time at Segal Advisors as Director of Research, UBS Paine Webber, and Neuberger Berman as a portfolio manager on the mutual fund wrap platform. Gino holds a Bachelors of Business Administration (BBA) in Banking and Finance from Hofstra University. In addition, he is a member of the CFA Society New York and Vice Chair of the CFA New Jersey Chapter.

I’ve always found Gino to be very pleasant to be around. In addition to his full time job, Gino is also a co-owner and restaurant entrepreneur of two pizza restaurants and an avid long distance runner, having completed a 100 mile ultra marathon.

Needless to say, Gino is an interesting person to get to know! Without further ado, here is our conversation with Gino Reina.

Our guest for today’s podcast is Bordon Lai, Managing Director at Beach Point Capital Management. Bordon joined Beach Point in 2021 to help build out the firm’s private equity and special situation investing capabilities.

Bordon has been in the industry for over 20 years and was previously at Quilvest Private Equity, a global multi-family office with $5B of AUM. Prior to Quilvest, Bordon worked at Pegasus Capital Advisors and Vision Capital, where he invested under a flexible mandate in opportunistic investments in the middle market.

Bordon started out his career as an investment banking analyst at Wachovia Securities and Credit Suisse First Boston. Bordon earned his bachelor’s degree from Georgetown University and MBA from The Wharton School of University of Pennsylvania.

Joining me on the podcast as co-host is Agnes Tan, who recently graduated from Columbia Business School and will be co-hosting/hosting a handful of podcasts on behalf of AAAIM in the coming weeks.

So what does it take to be a successful private equity investor? We asked Bordon and he was gracious enough to share good insights on how he differentiated himself. Without further ado, please enjoy our conversation with Bordon Lai.