Success Stories

18 Salisbury Capital Japan KK ("the Company") was established on November 10, 2022 as a Japanese stock company (Kabushiki Kaisha) by 18 Salisbury Holdings Limited, which is also the sole shareholder of 18 Salisbury Capital Limited (“18 Salisbury HK”). 18 Salisbury HK is a regulated and licensed asset manager currently holding licenses granted by the Securities and Futures Commission in Hong Kong to engage in (i) advising on securities (Type 4 License) and (ii) asset management (Type 9 License). The Company was formed for the primary purpose of providing investment advice to 18 Salisbury HK regarding Japanese listed and unlisted companies.

Since its inception, 18 Salisbury HK strives to create a unique financial institution in the Asian alternative investment area by drawing on founding members’ decades-long experience in private capital and absolute return investing businesses. We believe that our intellectual capability to process and analyze information in both public and private markets across the capital structure is our biggest differentiator.

Our Private Capital Business provides a suite of private capital market solutions and services to family offices and private equity investors. We also have specific investment mandates and capital commitment from a handful of family offices to source and execute private capital transactions. Our flexible approach to work with a small, select client base allows us to be focused and nimble across the private capital market cycle.

Our Absolute Return Investing Business currently runs our maiden hedge fund, which has been using a balanced regional approach to invest into asymmetric risk-return opportunities across Asia. The fund emphasizes a multi-asset class research framework, anchored with event-driven and special situations analytical process. The goal is to provide investors with a diversified portfolio that generates un-correlated absolute return.

For both businesses, Japan is most important investment destination for us. Japan represents more than 75% of our private capital transaction pipeline as well as our portfolio allocation in our fund. Going forward, we aim to size up our investment resources in Japan in accordance with our overall business growth.

We had a very positive experience throughout the application process. Given that half of our team members are not Japanese speakers, we initially budgeted substantial time for internal discussion regarding questions from the FSA. To our positive surprise, the entire process was fully transparent in English. We were able to respond to all the questions from the FSA regarding our business interest and operational infrastructure without any problem.

We are very impressed by the Financial Start-up Support Program. It is absolutely un-heard of anywhere in the world. Compared with other established global asset managers, such program provided even more disproportionate benefit to our company. In fact, we believe that this program levels the playing field and allows true start-ups like 18 Salisbury to obtain the IAA license and open the Japan office without being constrained by legal fees and other set-up costs.

This advisory license is an important step for us to strengthen research and investment sourcing capabilities in Japan. Across Asia, we believe that the Japanese market currently offers the most compelling investment opportunity set. We will hire more on-the-ground investment professionals in Japan. In particular, we not only want to hire talent straight out of colleges or business schools but also hire from other non-financial industries to enlarge the talent pool of the financial professionals in Japan. Overseas firms, especially in the asset management industry, tend to hire only experienced professions historically. Our belief is that to understand culture with local language is much more important in the long run than the knowledge of finance at the beginning. We recently hired a young passionate Japanese who has obtained an MBA in Hong Kong and previously worked at a Japanese chemical company. In addition, we are quite passionate about financial education for the public, including students, to foster the industry in the long term; hence we are seeking the right partner to provide financial education in Japan.

18 Salisbury is currently partnering with the University of Hong Kong MBA program, where we help MBA students who have interest in joining the finance industry to experience the real world of finance. We also have two undergraduate interns currently and are happy to partner with universities in Japan.

In the long run, we plan to expand our license to include investment management license and even full brokerage license because of our belief in “Changing Japan”. We believe that Japanese corporates and retail investors are still very under-invested in the securities and fund markets; and 18 Salisbury has the intellectual and execution capability to provide solutions for them.

Unlike other established financial firms coming to Japan, we have an Asian-centric firm where half of the current team members are Japanese nationals. The receipt of this IAA license is just a first step in our overall Asia-originated expansion plan. Our team always has the passion to develop the Asian financial markets (including Japan, but not only Japan). The more solid foundation we can build in the Asian financial markets, the more possibilities we can explore to expand globally in the future.

Our founding team members (Masanori Takaku, Stephen Yuen and Terufumi Hamazaki) worked together at the office building with the address of 18 Salisbury Road in Hong Kong. That is our origin, and we believe it is always important to remember the origin.