Hedge fund boxers take black eye in Hong Kong contest

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Boxing and other martial arts are gaining popularity among Hong Kong’s traders and hedge fund operators.

Benoit “La Tornade” Descourtieux, the second-oldest contender in Hong Kong’s third annual Hedge Fund Fight Night for charity, finds it easy to draw a link between managing money and martial arts.

“As long as we do well most of the time, or even if we don’t do well but survive, we’ll be OK,” said the 46-year-old, Michael Douglas-lookalike in an interview at his 27th-floor office with a view of workers unloading cargo ships at Victoria Harbour. Descourtieux manages the Calypso Asia Fund, which bets on rising and falling stock prices and their derivatives.

His fund’s performance reflects his words. The portfolio he manages fell just 5.8 percent last year, data on his company website shows, when the global credit crisis triggered a 43 percent drop in the benchmark MSCI Asia-Pacific Index. For the first eight months of the year, his fund was in step with the index’s 26.6 percent rise, said Descourtieux.

“We have no certainty of not being hit, but we know techniques and train until it’s instinctive,” said the 5-ft-6 Descourtieux, who plans to make up for his waning athleticism with sharper mental focus and strategy that come with age.

Since June, Descourtieux has been spending several hours a week amid columns of punching bags at Jab Mixed Martial Arts Studio, honing punches, footwork, and dodges with dozens of other hopefuls ahead of last month’s showdown at the Happy Valley Racecourse. Descourtieux registered 65kg at his weigh-in, 1kg heavier than before.

As the twelve finalists slug it out for three, two-minute rounds in the ring, about 800 of their black-tied industry peers will sip wine, eat dinner and bid on holiday packages to raise funds for Operation Smile and Operation Breakthrough. The most-coveted lot of the evening might be a five-course lunch for twelve prepared by Relish Kitchen in the Dragon Garden historical site where Roger Moore shot a scene from the 1974 James Bond movie, ‘Man With The Golden Gun’ said organiser IronMonger Events.

The fight night aims to raise HK$1m ($129,000) to repair children’s facial deformities and combat crime and juvenile delinquency in low-income and immigrant communities, said IronMonger. Tables for twelve cost between HK$18,000 ($2323) and HK$50,000 ($6450), and pay for training the fighters and hosting the event, said Robert Derry, IronMonger’s managing director, in an interview. A medical team is on standby during the bouts.

Aside from Descourtieux, Bruce “Almighty” French of UBS AG, Steve “Dynamite” Davidson from JPMorgan Chase & Co and Jesse “Happy Feet” Kavanagh of Nomura Holdings Inc will also fight in the finals. John “Headcount Reduction” Crane of 3A Asia Ltd, a fund of funds, is the oldest fighter at 49.

Boxing and other martial arts are gaining popularity among Hong Kong’s professionals, especially in industries such as trading which thrive on risk, reward endurance and punish mistakes with brutal blows, according to Andrew Wong Kee, managing director at Jab. Wong Kee says the number of Jab’s students have risen 20 percent since September 2008 as more professionals signed up to beat stress.

About a fifth of Asia’s $126bn in hedge-fund assets was managed in Hong Kong as of December, more than other cities in the region, figures from Alternative Investment Management Association, or AIMA, and Eurekahedge show. Hong Kong had 245 hedge-fund managers by the end of last year, against rival Singapore’s 150, and was the only major hedge-fund center with a net increase in startups in 2008, AIMA said, quoting AsiaHedge.

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