Our assets are still a fraction of those managed by some of the bigger investment firms. But we have studied how the best of those partnerships operate, and put in place systems like theirs where, if you do something valuable, then you can progress up the ladder. So far, those institutionalizing measures have worked well. It’s because of them that we’ve managed to take the firm from being totally Greater China focused when it launched to being a global business with highly diversified Asia-Pacific operations today.
Our first phase – what we now refer to as Gaw 1.0 – was centered largely on single-asset deals. In Gaw 2.0, starting around 10 years ago, we moved into thematic platform investing, first developing retail outlet malls and entertainment complexes with a European partner, then adding logistics developments, internet and data centers, hospitality, and other commercial real-estate related developments.
Those schemes laid the foundations for Gaw 3.0 – taking thematic platform building a step further to set up businesses which combine a real estate arm with another business that owns and operates revenue-generating businesses within the industry – so-called “operating company/property company (opco/propco)” deals.
In 2021, Gaw Capital completed the final close of our first commingled growth equity fund, Gaw Growth Equity Fund I, which targets investing in prop-tech (property technology) and real-estate operating companies that are high growth and highly scalable with a primary focus on Asia. We have been embracing prop-tech investment by not only deploying capital, but also offering our in-depth expertise in management and global presence to help these real estate technology companies grow and thrive.
This has opened the way for us to develop and run businesses such as renewable energy battery storage facilities and to supplement our real estate expertise with prop-tech businesses that extend our reach into new economy property investment, management, and marketing platforms.
We’ve changed a lot over the years. We started off looking for investors asset by asset as we discovered one real estate opportunity after another. Now we’re always looking for ways of assembling collections of assets that can always be further expanded as new investors come on board.
Of course, we still like to take advantage of single-asset opportunities when we spot them, but we focus a lot more of our senior management time on how we should be building these thematic platforms because of their huge scalability potential. This approach seems to be working. Institutionalizing our business allowed us to increase our assets under management to $12 billion five years ago. The steps we’ve taken since then have seen that total rise to more than $34 billion.
Looking ahead
Today, the challenge is maintaining and growing our position in what looks certain to be a tougher business environment in the coming few years.
On Hong Kong, our home, we are optimists. It’s survived tough times in the past – the riots of 1967, the immigration wave in the late 1980s ahead of the 1997 handover – and today investors are concerned about the direction China is taking.
But we think China will continue to maintain Hong Kong’s separate position under the “One Country, Two Systems” principle. From everything we hear, Hong Kong will retain its position as China’s main window to the rest of the world up to and beyond 2047, the year when Beijing will have to decide whether to renew the current system under which Hong Kong is run.
