Jeff Fisher in Hong Kong relaunch for giant US investor

Jeff Fisher has left hedge fund RAB Capital in Hong Kong to open an office in the same city for a US-based alternatives manager with assets under management of $30 billion. This fund shuttered its Hong Kong office in 2009, but had retained regional representation in Singapore.

So, which one?

Our deal on this news was an embargo of the precise name, because the firm in question wants the honour of advising the journalistic community of its 'excitement' via a press release, which will come later. However, we are allowed to give cryptic clues.

1)      The first letter is 'F'.

2)      It has the same name as a Hong Kong electronics retailer.

3)      Soldiers are garrisoned in one.

Fisher worked as a director at RAB Capital, and before that had been a star prime broker at Citi, where he nestled under the wing of Hannah Goodwin. He specialised in capital introductions at that time, during a period when capital flowed more freely for hedge funds and you didn't need a pretty face -- as well as brains -- to work in capital introductions. Once upon a time he also served as an officer in the US Navy.

Joining RAB Capital is another former Citi executive, David Seex, who will be their new Asia chief executive. Some time ago he worked at Citigroup Alternative Investments as managing director and head of Asia and Japan. He had been mulling establishing a new alternatives platform venture, but decided on the RAB post instead.

Macho man Fisher, who turns 40 this summer, commemorates his passage into middle age via an ascent (on foot) of Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa's highest peak.

In his new job at F******* (first syllable rhymes with 'Wart', second syllable rhymes with 'Mess'),  Fisher will report back to the US to a well-known name from bygone times in Asia, Jarret Wait, the former Asia head of Lehman Brothers prior to Jesse Bhattal. He steered Lehman in these parts through the Asian financial crisis, though perhaps didn't receive the full credit he deserved for that achievement. 

Wait, an expert practitioner of the macarena dance, was also the mastermind of initiatives such as Lehman becoming the self-styled 'internet bank of choice' in the late 1990s, a stratagem led by famed stock-research guru Ravi Sarathy. 

To complete this daisy chain, Sarathy has come out of sybaritic retirement (thanks to Bernie Madoff) and has just returned to Asia to recoup his fortune via telecoms research for Citi in Hong Kong.

In a side note, Bhattal still owes Sarathy $3,000 for air tickets purchased in Jakarta in May 1998 to escape from the riots.