Keppel’s Alpha Investment Partners Names New CEO as Flagship Fund Goes Quiet

Singapore’s Alpha Investment Partners saw its first change in top management in half a decade this month as chief executive Alvin Mah left the private fund management unit of Keppel Corporation after holding the senior level position since February 2018.

“It has been 18 years since I first walked through the doors of Alpha’s first office on the 15F of Bugis Junction Towers as an employee,” Mah said in an update on his LinkedIn page. “Since then, we have moved three times as the team grew. First, as Alpha, then as part of Keppel Capital. It has been a most rewarding journey.”

Keppel Corporation representatives declined to comment on Mah’s departure or to trumpet the arrival of a new boss for Alpha, other than to provide Mingtiandi with a link to a page showing Galen Lee as the fund manager’s new chief executive.

The management transition comes nearly three years after Alpha last provided a public update on its flagship Alpha Asia Macro Trends Funds series, which had launched in October of 2019 with a goal of raising $1 billion for the fourth edition of the pan-Asian vehicle.

Veteran Takes Over

Before being appointed to the top spot at Alpha Investment Partners this month Lee had served as head of investments for the firm for more than five years, according to his LinkedIn profile.

During his time with Alpha, Lee’s responsibilities have included looking after investments in the company’s core, core-plus and value-add strategies as well as setting up new ventures include the Keppel Vietnam Fund and Alpha’s Indonesia logistics fund, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Before joining the Temasek Holdings-backed group in 2018 the Columbia Business School graduate had served three years as head of capital markets for Singaporean developer City Developments Ltd and also has prior experience with UBS, Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Australia’s Macquarie Group, per his LinkedIn records.

Mah has yet to comment on his plans post-Alpha other than to mention that he remains on the investment committees for a few of the company’s funds. Keppel representatives said that the group does not comment on ex-employees.

Having first joined Alpha in 2005 as a senior investment manager, Mah worked his way up to chief investment officer before taking on the chief executive role in 2018. In a profile published in a Keppel internal publication last year, Mah noted that since 2004, Alpha has executed over 200 transactions with a gross acquisition value of over $27 billion.

Strategic Shift

The low-key leadership transition at Alpha Investment Partners comes as the company has focusing on targetted investment vehicles at the same time that its flagship fund has gone silent.

After its Alpha Asia Macro Trends Fund III (AAMTF III) venture had raised $1.1 billion for its final close in 2019, Keppel lowered its goals for the fourth edition of that strategy with the company announcing an equity target of $1 billion for AAMTF IV when the vehicle was first announced in June 2020.

Alpha announced a $295 million first closing on that vehicle in October of 2020 and has yet to make a subsequent public statement on its fourth flagship fund. Keppel representatives had not responded to Mingtiandi inquiries regarding the current status of AAMTF IV by the time of publication.

At the same time that Alpha’s flagship fund has gone quiet, Keppel Capital has announced a series of ventures targetting high-yielding sectors including logistics and data centres.

In June of 2020 Keppel Corporation said in a statement to the Singapore exchange that Alpha Investment Partners had teamed with a unit of Canada’s Manulife and Indonesia’s PT Mega Manunggal Property to launch a $200 million Indonesia logistics investment venture.

Then in December of that year Keppel said that it had launched a second data centre fund under Alpha Investment Partners and had already achieved a $500 million first closing on that venture. In April of 2021 Alpha Investment Partners said it had secured a $267.6 million separate account mandate from PGGM, with that commitment bringing with it a top-up option for the Dutch pension fund manager.

Keppel Capital said in December 2020 that it had launched Keppel Vietnam Fund in cooperation with Keppel Land with $400 million already raised on the way to a $600 million target.