James Chirnside is the CIO of Asia Pacific Asset Management, which he established in September 2002. James holds overall responsibility for the origination of APAM’s investment ideas and investment process.

Since 1988 James has been exclusively focused on alternative investment management and absolute return strategies in Sydney, Hong Kong, London and Melbourne.  Prior to establishing APAM in 2002, James worked for Challenger Financial Group, where he specialised in the creation of alternative investment vehicles. During this period, James successfully launched two ASX listed private equity investment funds.

Between 1992 to 1998, James worked as Senior Fund Manager for emerging markets specialist manager Regent Fund Management Hong Kong.  In this role, James conceived of, launched and managed the US$350 million Regent Pacific Hedge Fund (RPHF).  In 1994 RPHF achieved a 1st ranking of 239 funds in the Standard & Poors Micropal fund ratings for Emerging Market Hedge Funds. RPHF was the first ever publicly available Hedge Fund dedicated to Asian Equities.

In addition to running the RPHF, James managed a further US$300m in hedge fund assets on behalf of institutional and private clients. In his capacity as country head of Australia and Indonesia, he was also responsible for the firm’s proprietary and corporate investment activities. In addition, James was Managing Director of Regent Derivatives Ltd, whose activities included Regent Group and client portfolio risk management across Equities, FX, Commodities, Fixed Income and Property assets.

Prior to working for Regent Fund Management, James ran a proprietary trading book for investment bank County NatWest in London, where he specialised in closed-end fund and equity derivatives risk arbitrage.  His investment activities at County NatWest were focused in Australia, Japan, Asia ex Japan and Emerging Europe equity markets.

In addition to his directorship of APAM, James also presently holds two non-executive directorships of the ASX listed investment companies WAM Capital Ltd and Cadence Capital Ltd.