Private Equity News & Analysis

Ex-HSBC and ex-CLSA execs team up

Vince Warner and Josephine Price have established Chepstow Capital, a private equity firm targeting Asia’s mid-market opportunities.

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Ex-HSBC executive Vince Warner and ex-CLSA Capital Partners executive Josephine Price have partnered to set up Chepstow Capital, a Hong Kong-based private equity firm.

Chepstow Capital will advise and manage funds targeting mid-market opportunities in Asia. Warner is Chepstow Capital’s chief executive officer while Price is its chief investment advisor. Both are also managing directors of the firm.

Previously, Warner was the chief executive officer of HSBC Alternative Proprietary Investment Advisor. He was also a senior member of the bank’s Asian private equity business for 12 years.

Price was formerly the deputy chief executive officer of CLSA Capital Partners, the alternative asset management arm of investment bank CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets. She joined CLSA in 1995 to establish its private equity business and was the managing director of Aria Investment Partners, a series of pan-Asian growth capital funds.

“The mid-market is more attractive than the large cap market now, with the added bonus that few top-tier fund groups in Asia have strategies focussed on the mid-market or the appetite for smaller deals,” Price said in a Chepstow Capital statement.

There have been a number of cases across Asia and the Middle East in the past year where industry professionals have left established or captive firms to set up their own businesses. Most recently, Iyad Duwaji, chairman of Dubai-based SHUAA Partners, announced he was leaving the firm to set up an independent private equity platform.

Other examples include Renuka Ramnath, who in April resigned from her role as the managing director and chief executive officer of Mumbai-based ICICI Venture to launch her own fund, and Joe Zhou, who in 2008 left Kleiner Perkins to found Keytone Ventures. He had joined Kleiner Perkins the year before to launch its Chinese business. In the same year, Gene Lorenz, Janine Middleton and Rob Nichols founded Sydney-based Tasman Capital Partners through the buyout of Nikko Principal Investments Australia from Citigroup. Lorenz and Nichols were working at Nikko before that.