Singapore-based research consultancy GFIA, founded by Peter Douglas (pictured), has released its latest research paper. Using five strategies, the report analysed data from 2005 to May 2010 to look at the relationship between a fund manager’s location and their fund’s performance. And the result is unequivocal: Asia based fund managers deliver higher annualized returns than their non-Asia based counterparts. The figures are as follows: Asia equities ex-Japan, 5.9%; Asia equities inc-Japan, 0.4%; Chinese equities, 2.2%; Japan equities, 2.4%; Macro and Multi-strategy, 2.1%. “We also looked at drawdown and correlation and found these to be less dependant on location,” senior analyst SiewLing Lay told Hedgeweek. “However, we did discover that volatility was higher for Asia-based managers,” Lay adds. “The only outlier was Japan equities (1.2%).”