Simon Potter joins Quam Asset to handle capital raising

Simon Potter is joining Quam Asset Management in Hong Kong. He takes the title of director and is tasked with raising capital for their portfolio of alternative investment products.

In this newly created role he will be reporting to Richard Harris, CEO of Quam Asset Management, who describes Potter as, “an experienced salesman with a wonderful bedside manner with clients”. Harris himself only joined Quam in 2010 from Port Shelter Investment Management.

Potter joins from Triple A Partners in Hong Kong, the distribution and seeding business headed by Paul Smith, where he worked as an investment analyst, so he comes with institutional experience which might come in handy for Quam. Smith says he is talking to potential successors to Potter’s chair.

At Quam, Potter will be trying to raise capital for, inter alia, the Quam China Focus Fund, which has around $40 million in assets and recently introduced an RMB share class. The firm has been planning this build-out of the business side of their alternative funds’ marketing since the arrival of Harris.

Quam Asset Management has also been adding new fund products in transitioning economies such as the Quam Silk Road Mongolia Fund, which launched in April this year. Quam also has a small Middle East Fund and has been giving thought to introducing an African product and an oil and gas fund. The AUM of the entire asset management business was reported as $78 million in March 2011.