Company Background

Access Investment Management was established in 1997 and it is a wholly-owned subsidiary of The Platinum Group, which is an Asian financial group offering financial services and advice to regional and international clients.

In July 1998, Access acquired the management contract for 3 Hong Kong authorised funds from Jardine Fleming. These funds were renamed Access PCP and comprise of a Global Balanced Fund, a Global Opportunities Fund and an Emerging Markets Fund. The investment philosophy of the Access investment management team is to focus principally on selection of markets and asset classes on the basis of research, experience and strategic asset allocation advice from Valu-Trac Research. It is the team's opinion, as backed up by a considerable body of research, that the most important decision in investment management is the strategic asset allocation amongst countries and asset classes. Once the asset allocation is determined, exposure to the relevant market or asset class is then acquired by selecting funds with consistent performance in the case of Access PCP, or index instruments in the case of pension fund or segregated account management. The advantage of this approach is that changes in assets under management may be made quickly and economically. The ability to use a wide range of investment managers helps enhance performance by enabling Access to dynamically select fund managers according to their recent or longer term performance.

Background of the Access Investment Team

Robert Thomas, Investment Adviser, qualified as a chartered accountant before joining Robert Fleming & Co in London in 1967. He was transferred to the newly established Investment Management firm in Hong Kong in 1974 and headed up their office in Tokyo from 1976 to 1978. He returned to Hong Kong and from that point on was principally engaged in building up the fund management business and was the Managing Director until 1996.  He became Chairman of the Access Group in 1997 and was the original manager of the Access PCP range of funds from their inception until 1996.

Liu Chee Ming, Investment Manager, is the Managing Director of the Platinum Group, which he set up in early 1996,  and Access Investment Management H.K..  He has over 25 years of experience in financial services sector including stockbroking, corporate finance and portfolio management.  He was previously in charge of the investment banking division  of a leading Asian securities house in Hong Kong and had also held position as the managing director  of the South East–Asian stockbroking network of a US leading money centre bank in Hong Kong.  He is currently a member of the Panel for Takeovers and Mergers in Hong Kong.