At Guyerzeller Bank, a Zurich based Swiss private bank which is now part of HSBC, we identified Asia outside Japan as the focus of our investment activities. We started managing a number of large equity portfolios under the theme, quality bridge to Asia.

We launched Asia Investment Corporation (AIC) and opened our Hong Kong office.

We established HSZ Group in a management buyout from HSBC Guyerzeller Bank.

We launched China Investment Corporation (CIC) at a time when an increasing number of privately controlled Chinese corporations opened up to institutional investors.

We launched Asia Opportunity Fund (AOF), a long-short equity hedge fund.

Hansrudolf Schmid moved from Zurich to Hong Kong. We upgraded the legal structure of CIC by converting it into HSZ China Fund, a Swiss investment fund.

Ahead of the world financial crisis, we decided to liquidate AIC and AOF each producing considerable gains for many investors.

From 2008 onwards our focus was entirely on HSZ China Fund. China was the economic locomotive of Asia, if not the entire world. Its policy of “controlled release” was key to China’s progress and the basis of our strategy to focus on privately controlled companies in the universe of listed Chinese companies.

With the arrival of Stefan Kräuchi we added a business unit under the name ILS Advisers. It is dedicated to the development of the ILS (insurance-linked securities) niche asset class. Like our Chinese equities, ILS offers investment opportunities which are relatively uncorrelated to other equity markets respectively asset classes.

On January 1 Stefan Kräuchi became the CEO and Partner of the firm and ILS Diversified Ltd., a fund of fund providing access to a selection of specialist ILS funds and managers in a fully diversified way, was launched.