Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan (OTPP), Canada’s third largest pension fund, said it has laid off four dealmakers in Hong Kong on its Asia venture and growth equity investment team, which will now focus on India.
OTPP did not disclose the names of the team members who were let go, but three people with knowledge of the matter said they included the team’s leader, senior managing director Kelvin Yu, who focused on Greater China, South Korea and Japan.
The departures have not been previously reported.
The Teachers’ Venture Growth (TVG) team “will continue to pursue a global investment strategy which in Asia Pacific will now primarily be focused on India for the near term,” an OTPP spokesperson said in a statement to Reuters late on Tuesday.
“This has resulted in the closure of four investment roles in Hong Kong,” the spokesperson added. “This decision is related only to our venture growth team in Hong Kong. We have (about) 25 team members based in Hong Kong and intend to maintain a presence there moving forward.”
The shrinking of the TVG team comes amid growing tensions between China and the West, a challenging investment environment due to rising global interest rates and a difficult market for exiting investments in the country because of tougher listing rules.
OTPP began pulling back in early 2023, pausing new direct investments in private assets in China, which represented about 2%, or C$5 billion ($3.65 billion), of its net investments at the time.
Globally, TVG invests directly in technology companies across North America, Europe and Asia and had net investments worth $7.5 billion as of the end of last year, according to its website. The TVG team’s India branch, which was set up in Mumbai in 2022, has two investment professionals.
In China, its portfolio companies include autonomous driving firm Pony.ai and community grocery shopping app Xingsheng Youxuan, both of which have counted Yu among their board members.
Yu and the other three senior team mates were informed last week about the job cuts, said the sources, who declined to be identified as they were not authorised to speak to media.
Yu did not respond to a request for comment sent via LinkedIn.
OTPP has built a presence in the Asia Pacific region for over a decade and has spent over $22 billion on more than 40 deals in the region, showed its website.
China-focused venture capital funds have raised just $1.1 billion so far this year. That compares with $16 billion raised for all of 2023, according to data from research firm Preqin.
The numbers are a far cry from a peak in 2018 when more than 1,000 China-focused funds raised around $120 billion.
Last year, OTPP closed down its China equity investment team based in Hong Kong and Canada’s largest pension fund CPP Investments axed at least five investment professionals at its Hong Kong office, at a time when Ottawa’s ties with Beijing had frayed over a number of issues.
Reuters