Anand Batepati

Co-founder and Portfolio Manager at GFM Asset Management

Speaker

I am a co-founder and portfolio manager at GFM, a SFC licensed investment firm in Hong Kong. I manage the GFM Focus Investing Strategy which is offered to clients as separately managed accounts held in their name. I invest alongside my clients, and we charge only a performance fee subject to a high watermark. We only make money when our clients do.

I believe that "investing is figuring out what a business is worth and then paying a lot less for it." We practice this by learning deeply about a business and its peers, and only investing when market gyrations throw up bargain prices for company ownership. After investing, we monitor business evolution and management actions to know when to exit, add or hold.

We view stocks as "title deeds" to business ownership, and not as a number bouncing on a graph. Hence we focus on knowing whether a business is good, great or mediocre. Our approach is simple, difficult, and generates large wealth over time.

Before starting GFM, I was the Head of Multi Asset Structuring for Asia at Rabobank. I have previously worked at HSBC, Bear Stearns, JP Morgan and the World Bank. I hold two masters degrees in finance from London Business School and Asian Institute of Management / McGill University.