I have 23 years of experience in the investment trust industry and have been involved in a variety of funds. One of the most memorable funds is an international diversified investment fund that gained no attention in 2003. At a time when perceiving constraints of domestic asset management companies, I focused on a fund that employed a method combining domestic and international indexes. Since then, in conjunction with several other financial institutions, I have been involved in enlightenment activities for investor clients and have concentrated myself on creating ideas to encourage those investors to own funds on a long-term basis.

Since its establishment in 2004, Capital Asset Management (CAM) has been offering a wide range of funds that invest in domestic and foreign equities and preferred securities. CAM is an independent investment management firm with over 10 years of fund management experience investing in equities of emerging markets and companies. Among them, we have a unique strength in equity investments in ASEAN countries such as Vietnam and the Philippines, and in particular, we have many years of making in-house investment management of Vietnamese equities, and we take pride in being the leader in managing Vietnamese equities in Japan.

While I have been serving as CAM’s Representative Director and CEO since June 2020, I would like to set forth below some of my experiences I have so far gone through. It goes without saying that, as an investment management firm, it is a never-ending challenge to enhance fund management capabilities. In order to meet such objective, as a premise, we need to contemplate the method as to how to strengthen capabilities of research and analytical skills along with development of fund management approaches. While CAM does not outsource investment management, it instead conducts in-house investment management. CAM makes a final investment decision based on its unique management methods and global information network. With respect to investments in Vietnam, CAM coordinates with a local research firm established in Hanoi. As for other foreign equity investments, CAM utilizes advice of investment managers who are familiar with investment targets and investment themes, thereby aiming to improve its research and analytical capabilities as well as abilities to develop management methods.

Furthermore, in order to improve management capabilities, it is imperative that, given limited management resources, we enhance concentration in core competence depending on history, business scale and members of an investment management company. Having made a formation of funds stricter, we have reduced the number of publicly offered investment trusts to eleven as of the end of May 2023 so that we can maintain a quantity of funds that allows us to handle asset management in an appropriate manner. We have carefully selected those funds to be continuously managed and rationalized a lineup of funds enabling fund managers to focus on investment management. At a fund management company I belonged to before assuming the position of CAM's representative, I had an experience of focusing on enlightening people about funds that realized international diversified investment, concept of which was not yet common at that time. We believe it is important for a fund management company to be able to create a fund with a concept that can differentiate itself by taking advantage of its features.

In this connection, ahead of the competition, CAM pioneered establishment of two Vietnamese equity funds in August 2010 and August 2014. Further, in June 2019, it formed World Tourism Equity Fund, which focuses on travel, a theme virtually unprecedented in Japan. Moreover, in December 2021, in a fund-of-funds format, CAM launched two orchestra funds that aim to replicate a management approach practiced by global institutional investors by way of investing primarily in alternative management funds. As above, CAM has been conscious of differentiating itself from its competition concerning the funds it has established and launched. Besides, at the end of May 2023, we launched Global Bio-Pharmaceutical Equity Fund, which focuses on biopharmaceuticals in light of global aging and technological evolution.

Last but not least, we hope that the countries in which our funds invest will take an interest in our country, thereby further deepening our relationship. We are determined to put our hearts into forming each one of the funds with a view to having clients of our firm feel close to various social issues and interested in them.

Toshinobu Yamazaki
Representative Director and CEO