Sonia Yu, Head of Investment Professional Development for International and Point72 LaunchPoint for Asia, joined us to talk about her views on Point72’s talent pipeline in Asia Pacific (APAC), what differentiates our firm in the region, and her career journey from investment professional to senior leader and mentor.
Tell us about what you do here.
In APAC, I lead both Point72 LaunchPoint, which is our emerging portfolio manager (PM) program, and Investment Professional Development (IPD), which focuses on analyst career development. Both are global talent initiatives, and I ensure we’re closely coordinated with the U.S. and EMEA.
In Point72 LaunchPoint, we provide both internal promotes and external hires with the time and support to build their business and to launch as a PM ready for the challenges of the market. It’s not a one-size-fits-all program. We spend time with the PMs to understand their process, and then we work with them on what they need, whether that’s determining coverage, building and managing a team, showing them how to utilize all of the resources that the firm offers, or learning our risk systems.
In IPD, we focus on the continuous learning and development for Point72 investment analysts. It includes customized coaching programs, group training and learning programs with internal and external speakers, idea sharing sessions and offsites. We cover topics ranging from market related developments, learning about different investment strategies and processes, various research and idea generation skills, and sharing of best practices.
At what stage of an analyst’s career do you start working with them?
Right from the beginning, we work with the PMs on creating development plans for each analyst on their team when they join the firm. We help the analysts establish specific short-term and long-term goals to improve various skills and establish targets as they progress in their careers, and we review these goals regularly and devise programs or coaching topics based on these development plans. When an analyst gets here—whatever route they took—we are responsible for their career development, and everyone is on a different journey.
How do you know when an analyst is ready for Point72 LaunchPoint?
It’s a process. It’s a continuous discussion with the analyst, their PM and management. We work with the internal promotes for years before they get to the program, so we get a good understanding on their skillset and readiness.
Through these coaching conversations and development discussions, we can monitor how each analyst is developing and how they are building their PM skills. How do they think about their ideas and the risks associated with it? Have they demonstrated excellence in their space? How scalable and repeatable is their process? A key skill to becoming a successful PM is people management skills. So it’s also important for us to see if the analyst has already demonstrated excellence in managing an analyst with less experience, which would indicate they’d be better prepared to run a great team.
It’s a step-by-step process, and everyone needs to feel ready. We’ve seen people flame out who weren’t ready, and we don’t want that to happen here – we want people to have long, successful investing careers with us.
How strong is the talent pipeline in APAC now?
I’m really excited about our pipeline – last year we had the most Point72 LaunchPoint launches ever in APAC—we launched five PMs, with two internal promotes and three external hires. Our internal pipeline is as robust as ever. We think this pipeline of talent that we’ve built through programs like the Point72 Academy and IPD is what truly sets us apart from competitors. It offers a strong engine of growth for our business and our people.
What do you think makes Point72 different than other hedge funds?
I believe a major differentiator is how many resources we put into building and refining our development programs. We are constantly evolving and trying to improve our tools and training for investment professionals. We feel that’s a huge benefit for our analysts, but it’s also an important resource for PMs. For example, the Academy program provides a pipeline of skilled early-career analysts for our PMs.
We also have significant internal resources available to our PMs, from our portfolio construction analytics team to our trading desk, to our efforts around improving and coordinating corporate access meetings. We support our teams in all aspects of their jobs.
We also spend a lot of time understanding our PMs’ processes. You’re not just a name here. I’ve been here for nine years now, and many of our senior leaders in the region have been here just as long. We’ve seen our PMs grow, many from when they were analysts. We understand their process, style, and their needs.
In my view, all of this differentiates us a lot, and it’s not something that can be built overnight.
What makes the APAC region at the firm so unique?
We’ve been in Hong Kong since 2006, in Singapore since 2009, in Japan since 2011. We’ve never shut any offices in these three countries. We have offices in Taiwan and Sydney, too.
APAC is not a homogenous market. Our APAC business invests in 12 separate markets—and every country is different with their own nuances. We have people on the management team that have actually invested in all of these markets. That’s really important because leadership knows firsthand what it’s like to sit in an analyst’s and PM’s seat—we can speak the same language as the investment professionals, and understand the markets’ nuances.
And lastly, the firm is still growing. We are constantly innovating and looking for new opportunities.
Last question – you were a PM yourself before joining the firm. Can you talk about your career path?
I grew up in Hong Kong, and then went to the U.S. for college at the University of Pennsylvania. I started out in investment banking, then joined Maverick Capital, where I was a financials analyst covering the U.S. and Asia. At that time, the Asia financials market was just developing and was a really exciting time to be investing in Asia and it felt like the whole financial system was inflecting and changing rapidly.
I wanted to come back to Asia, but my family was in San Francisco, so I decided to spend some time there first and pursued a MBA and a master’s in education, because teaching is something I’ve always been interested in.
After grad school, I moved back to Asia and rejoined Morgan Stanley in Hong Kong, focusing on special situations investing though it became a distressed debt group in 2008. Ultimately, I was still an equities investor at heart and decided to join JPMorgan Asset Management as a Portfolio Manager. In 2016, a friend and ex-colleague who was a PM at Point72 told me about this role at Point72 that helps train and develop analysts, and I just thought it was so unique and perfect for my skillset.
I decided to give it a try, and that was nine years ago. I was initially hired to look after analyst development in the region but I’ve gotten new challenges and assignments along the way, including expanding our Point72 LaunchPoint program. In my experience, the beauty of working at Point72 is that you build your own career here. People are very open to your suggestions. I’ve always found that the people here want to evolve, and they want to innovate, and that’s something that’s truly celebrated. That’s been evident throughout my career here.