China emerging as new base for quant hedge funds

China is set to see a crop of quantitative hedge fund launches by mainland Chinese quant specialists, according to a panel of fund of hedge fund (FoHF) executives at the Battle of the Quants conference last week in Hong Kong. A retrenchment of staff in investment banks and hedge funds in the US has led to the sacking of quant specialists – many of who hail from mainland China or India, says Theodore Qi Shou, a Hong Kong-based portfolio manager at Skybound Capital, a FoHF firm. “Th…