Old Asia hand Jim Sweeney has migrated to the buy-side with his appointment as chief operating officer of Singapore hedge fund manager Artradis.

Sweeney joins from Credit Suisse where he worked in the fund-linked products group. However, he and the Artradis boys go back a long way. He worked with the hedge fund's founder Steve Diggle plus fellow Artradian Andrew Wong on the equity trading floor of Lehman Brothers in Hong Kong in the mid-90s, alongside Alastair Nicholson, now believed to be a vintner in New Zealand, Chi Won Yoon who is now an equities big shot at UBS, and the late Mike Bastion.

Artradis now manages $3.5 billion in its flagship Barracuda and AB2 funds -- both of which have picked up a hatful of various hedge fund awards in recent years including AsianInvestor's own.

Also in the stable are Artradis's new long convertible bond fund and the Naga series of equity funds -- the short-biased version of which was one of Asia's best performing hedge funds in 2008. That performance has followed through to 2009, with the fund up 6.2% so far this year. All of Artradis's principal hedge funds are up for 2009.