Hugh Young, chairman of Asia Pacific at abrdn, will retire at year’s end, bringing an end to a 43-year career.
Young used to run a suite of Asian equity portfolios but stepped back from the majority of funds in 2018. He has co-managed the abrdn Asia Focus trust for the past five years and will step down from the £393m small-cap investment trust on 31 December.
In preparation for Young’s retirement, last November abrdn added Flavia Cheong, its head of equities for Asia Pacific, to the trust as a third lead manager alongside Young and Gabriel Sacks.
Investment manager Xin-Yao Ng has also joined the trust’s team ahead of Young stepping down. Ng has worked alongside Young at abdrn for the past five years.
Young began his investment career in 1980 and has been managing Asian equities for abdrn since 1985, initially in London. He then moved to Singapore and founded Aberdeen Asia in 1992, serving as its CEO until Rene Buehlmann's appointment in 2021. At that point, Young agreed to stay on as chairman of Asia Pacific until the end of 2023 to ensure a smooth transition and provide strategic counsel to the business.
abrdn Asia Focus, which announced its results today, is slightly behind its benchmark for the year ended 31 July 2023. Its share price total return is up 7.3% and its net asset value total return is 7.6%, compared to 8.0% for the MSCI AC Asia ex-Japan Small Cap index.
The trust is fourth quartile over one and three years compared to its peers in the IA Asia Pacific Smaller Companies sector, but second quartile over five years to 19 October 2023. It revised its investment policy in November 2021 and changes were approved by shareholders in January 2022.
Krishna Shanmuganathan, chair of abrdn Asia Focus, said: “abrdn Asia Focus remains positioned around Asia’s long-term structural growth themes, such as greater domestic consumption that comes with Asia’s rising affluence, booming infrastructure, the growth of digital, moving to a lower-carbon future, advances in health and wellness technology, and the opportunities offered by the rollout of 5G, big data and digital interconnectivity.”