Triple-A Partners triples its partners

Asia Alternative Asset Partners, aka Triple-A Partners, has signed distribution arrangements with two alternative investment boutiques, taking the number of such partnerships to three in total. It already has a distribution relationship with Hong Kong-based Enhanced Investment Products.

First, it has exclusive rights to distribute the strategies of Sydney-based Lanterne Strategic Investors to clients in Asia, Europe and America. Lanterne, led by partners Michel Brookes and Peter Cousins (and formerly known as St Helen's Capital), is an active hedge fund manager established in 2001 that focuses on the top 100 listed Australian companies.

Triple-A's CEO Paul Smith and sidekick marketing director Joanne Murphy both know the partners from building a hedge-fund servicing platform at Bank of Bermuda (subsequently sold to HSBC). "They have a real prop-trading mentality, which has helped differentiate them," Murphy says of the Lanterne team. Lanterne's Arran fund, launched in 2004, has a 9.7% annualised return to date.

Second, Triple-A has agreed to distribute three funds of the London-based Reech AiM Group to Asian investors. Christophe Reech and his partners established the firm in 2006 with a range of strategies. Triple-A will be marketing a systematic futures trading product with no exposure to money markets or synthetic deposits; a multi-strategy relative-value fund that trades on discrepancies in the price of oil; and a third strategy covering commercial real estate co-managed with CBRE.

Murphy says the eclectic mix is by design: "We want to take on more business, so long as we represent one fund per sector." Triple-A Partners continues to seek funds in areas such as global macro or other trading-oriented strategies.

Korea and Japan will be two areas of focus for marketing these products, now that the firm has in place representatives Frank Packard in Tokyo and Henry "Hank" Morris in Seoul -- both Americans, in contrast to the very British Smith and Murphy. Yanks Frank and Hank now have more products on which to bank.