The Value Investors: Lessons from the World's Top Fund Managers

CHAPTER 9: The Value-Oriented Businessman

Teng Ngiek Lian

Target Asset Management

Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him.

—Aldous Huxley

Teng Ngiek Lian is the founder of Target Asset Management Pte. Ltd., a long-only investment management company established in Singapore in 1996. The company’s flagship Target Value Fund, which invests mainly in Asia ex-Japan, grew from $5.5 million at inception to $2 billion in July 2010, when Teng announced his retirement.

From September 1996 to November 2010, the fund returned 892.44 percent, or 17.59 percent per annum. During the same period, its benchmark index, MSCI ACFE (All Country Far East ex-Japan), returned 81.27 percent, or 4.29 percent annually.

After celebrating his sixtieth birthday, Teng wrote in his retirement letter in July 2010 that he wanted to take a short break to attend to personal matters and to think of ways to practice fund management in a less stressful manner. After a year of relaxation and brainstorming, he came out of retirement in June 2011 and re-launched the Target Value Fund with a smaller initial fund size of approximately $500 million. His objective is to again pursue higher returns and lower risk by applying his time-tested value investing principles.

•••

“Before one can properly determine the valuation of a stock, it is necessary first to determine its business ...