Mandy Chan leaves Fortis for Halbis

Mandy Chan, a senior China-focused portfolio manager at Fortis Investments in Hong Kong, has left the firm and will join Halbis on December 1.

Her role is to work alongside Richard Wong, who now runs Halbis's China equities strategies. Both will report to Halbis chief investment officer Ayaz Ebrahim.

Halbis, the active management arm of HSBC Global Asset Management, runs over $5 billion in A-share, H-share and red-chip strategies.

Ebrahim says the size of assets and the firm's desire to roll out additional strategies prompted the need for a second fund manager: "We need to maintain our leadership in the China investment space," he adds.

"Mandy has demonstrated an understanding of the market and has a record of good performance," says Ebrahim. "She has experience managing teams and has shown she works well with analysts. She is focused and passionate about investing, which is important."

Halbis also has two dedicated China analysts and another two analysts that can cover China equities within broader mandates. Moreover, HSBC has a stake in mainland fund management company Jintrust, and Halbis and Jintrust analysts share information and ideas.

Chan joined Fortis's Asian equity portfolio management team in 2004 to run part of the Hong Kong/China book, having been part of the ABN Amro Asset Management team acquired by Fortis Investments. She had risen to become CIO for Greater China equities, reporting to Patrick Ho, head of Fortis's Asia ex-Japan equities team.

Ho's team includes three portfolio managers and five regional analysts, and he maintains direct responsibility for Greater China equities. Fortis says it will add to this team and that Ho is looking to recruit a senior equity analyst to replace Chan.