Dow cracks Singapore for Rogge Partners

Rogge Global Partners, the $28 billion London-based fixed income specialist, has opened an office in Singapore. It has made this business move in order to provide localised service to a growing bench of Asian investors. RoggeÆs selection of this regional headquarters comes after a period of pondering the range of potential Asian locations and plumping for Singapore.

The new office opens up initially with a target of servicing Asia-based investors, which currently contributes an aggregate one third of RoggeÆs total assets under management. At a later stage, Rogge says that it will develop a research arm in Singapore, and build personnel to support research into Asian bond issuers. Rogge perceives Asian issuers as currently offering some of the best potential opportunities in global fixed income.

Jonathan Dow, a partner in Rogge and its marketing director, has relocated from New York to set up the new Asian office. Before joining Rogge Global Partners, Bruce Willis-lookalike Dow had worked in London and Manchester, for Rothschild Asset Management and NM Rothschild & Sons, in which capacity he worked in both the dealing room and the treasury products department, in tandem with credit strategists Ray Regan and Peter Fitzpatrick.

Rogge Global Partners was founded in 1984 by Olaf Rogge. In addition to the Singapore office, Rogge is also present in UK, the United States and Germany. Its London office is housed in a converted medieval theological college, giving it one of the most unique and intimate trading floors in the City; amiable though Singapore may be, the firmÆs Lion City digs are likely to be comparatively mundane.

The firm has experienced considerable growth. At the time it won AsianInvestorÆs award for best hedged one-year performance in 2005, it had assets of just $10 billion, and was already starting to detect increasing momentum in investments from Asia, and that trend has persisted.