About Us

Who We Are

Teneo Partners grew out of a recognized need for a regulatory compliant platform that would be comprehensive yet flexible enough to provide the kinds of customized services sought by asset managers looking to penetrate the investor market in Japan. We are uniquely positioned to offer innovative placement, marketing, service and structural solutions to those asset managers who are looking to profit from the capital raising opportunities in Japan. We work with a wide range of managers; from those focusing on listed assets to those who manage private assets. The funds we place in Japan span the entire asset class spectrum including long-only mutual funds, hedge funds, private equity funds, real estate funds, direct lending funds, infrastructure funds and venture capital funds.

Each asset manager has a unique set of needs and requirements. Consequently, in addition to our complete placement agent service, we also offer a full complement of unbundled services, allowing our asset manager clients to select only those services that they need to help them achieve their objectives. For those who only need basic agency chaperone services to those looking to place a team in Japan, we can create a program designed to meet specific requirements.

We also offer a digital capital introduction platform that is designed to support asset managers in building brand awareness for their firm and promoting their funds in Japan. It is designed to benefit both those managers seeking to build early stage market entry strategies as well as for those managers already active in Japan but who wish to expand their investor base.

Teneo Partners strives to be the premier cross border fund marketing firm in Japan. Our goal is to become a principal conduit between Japanese investors and managers throughout the world. We represent some of the most highly respected asset managers globally and through our understanding of the local investors, help them match their marketing plans and product offerings to the needs of the various investor segments.

Teneo Partners Team

Board of Directors

Stanley Howard view biography
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Stanley Howard — Founder, Managing Director & CEO

Stanley Howard is Founder, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Teneo Partners Japan, overseeing the firm’s business across all offerings. Mr. Howard is a veteran of the fund markets in Japan with over 30 years of experience in dealing with Japanese investors and institutions. He founded Teneo Partners in 2003 and has been instrumental in building the firm into an organization that is highly regarded for its ability to provide effective placement and innovative distribution offerings to asset managers. The firm has grown into an organization of 15 professionals, covering all investor segments of the market. Stan was born and raised in rural Japan, giving him a level of understanding of the culture that few foreigners have.

Employed by ItoChu, a major Japanese trading company, after graduating from the University of Michigan he later moved to the financial industry following his MBA studies at Northwestern University. Initially working at Smith Barney Harris Upham he later entered Morgan Stanley managing the foreign equity desk in Tokyo. Then, after joining the Tiedemann Investment group he entered the alternatives industry and subsequently managed the Japan business for Investor Select Advisors as President, Japan. During that time Stan served as Vice Chairman for the Japan Branch of AIMA, the Alternative Investment Management Association.

Kazuyuki Umezu view biography
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Kazuyuki Umezu — Managing Director & President

Kazuyuki Umezu is Managing Director and President of Teneo Partners. Mr. Umezu joined the firm in 2015 and assumed the role of Managing Director leading the sales and marketing program in Tokyo. Umezu-san brings to Teneo a special talent for navigating Japanese investment organizations establishing a means of identifying the key decision makers. Prior to joining Teneo, Umezu-san was a Managing Director and the Chief Marketing Officer of Shinko Asset Management, a predecessor company to Asset Management One, where he was instrumental in growing the firm AUM from the 8th largest to the 4th largest among all asset management companies in Japan. During his time at Shinko Asset Management, he was responsible for the market development and sales of a fund called Zeus which under his direction grew to be the largest mutual fund in Japan.

Before joining Shinko Asset Management, Umezu-san served as the Financial Markets Manager for Shinko Securities (now Mizuho Securities) performing underwriting in corporate finance, public utility finance, and working for their research department. He also spent a total of eight years between London and Paris during his tenure at the Industrial Bank of Japan. Umezu-san is a licensed and registered member of the Japan Securities Dealers Association and holds a Bachelors’ degree in Law from Toyo University.

Masafumi Miyoshi view biography
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Masafumi Miyoshi — Managing Director, Compliance

Masafumi Miyoshi is Managing Director, Compliance of Teneo Partners Limited Japan. Miyoshi-san, prior to joining Teneo Partners in 2016, was with Shinko Asset Management for ten years. In the final years of this tenure at Shinko Asset Management, Miyoshi-san served as Managing Director and Head of Compliance for the company which at the time, was the 6th largest asset management company in Japan. After graduating from university, he began his professional career in 1976 at Wako Securities, now part of Mizuho Securities. During his tenure of thirty years with the firm, he was engaged in securities sales and branch management. He held the position of Branch Manager in multiple cities including Nagasaki, Chiba, Kobe and finally, Kyoto. In 2006 Miyoshi-san was transferred to Shinko Asset Management, a related Mizuho Financial Group company and predecessor company to Asset Management One, currently the largest asset management company in Japan.

Having built an extensive career that included executive responsibilities for both sales and compliance his contribution and guidance of our business development at Teneo is invaluable. Miyoshi-san is a registered member of the Japan Securities Dealers Association and holds a Bachelors’ degree in Economics from Takushoku University in Tokyo.

Peter Douglas view biography
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Peter Douglas — External Director

Peter Douglas is a widely known and highly respected member of the Pan-Asian alternative asset management industry.

He started his career with the Foreign & Colonial group of investment management companies in 1985, working in London and Tokyo and later became a director of Aberdeen Asset Management Asia in Singapore in 1995. In 1998 in Singapore, Peter founded GFIA Pte Ltd, Asia’s first hedge fund research company focusing on the qualitative assessment of, portfolio construction of, and allocation to Asian and emerging market specialist alternative investment funds. Peter was the inaugural director of the Alternative Investment Management Association in Singapore and the Association’s first regional APAC director. In addition, he was one of the founders of the Financial Planning Association of Singapore. Peter has taught and mentored at the Singapore Management University and the University of Massachusetts.

Peter has an undergraduate degree from the University of Exeter in the U.K., an MBA from INSEAD, France, and is a pioneer-cohort Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst (CAIA). He is a Singapore Institute of Banking and Finance Distinguished Financial Industry Certified Professional. He has acted as non-executive director of many hedge and other alternative investment funds, not-for-profit organizations, and operating businesses. He is a director of the CAIA Foundation, a Massachusetts not-for-profit organization.

He is currently the representative director of a Nagano-based hospitality company. He is a British national and lives in Nozawa Onsen, Nagano Prefecture.

External Auditor

Yukihiro Nishimura view biography
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Yukihiro Nishimura — External Auditor

Yukihiro Nishimura is associate professor of finance at the Graduate School of Business Administration, Kobe University. He has been a faculty member and international exchange coordinator in charge of KIBER program (Kobe International Business Education and Research program, one-year exchange program with our partner universities abroad) since April 2014. He started his career at the Chase Manhattan Bank, N.A. Tokyo Branch (Now JP Morgan Chase) and held various positions at American and European investment banks in the areas of interest rate derivatives and fund derivatives.

He received his bachelor's degree in economics from The State University of New York College at Buffalo in 1981, participated in the Arms Control and Defense Program, the Graduate School of Political Science, The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and his Master of International Affairs from the School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University in 1984. He is a member of the Nippon Finance Association, Council of International Student Advisors of National Universities, and holds a position as external auditor for Teneo Partners, Japan Limited, a securities company specialized in offshore investment trust funds, PE fund, and other alternative products funds, operated under type I and type II securities licenses.

CEO

Stanley Howard Managing Director and CEO

Sales and Marketing

Kazuyuki Umezu Managing Director and President
Masashi Hirose Sales Director
Andrew Hesse Marketing Manager
Masashi Ichikawa Marketing Manager
Tatsumi Yamamoto Senior Marketing Manager
Masaaki Katsuyama Sales Specialist
Tomoru Place Marketing Manager
Yuriko Kitani Senior Marketing Manager
Mattias Karnell Marketing Manager
Taro Ueda Sales Specialist

Compliance

Masafumi Miyoshi Managing Director and Compliance
Toru Fujimoto Compliance officer
 

Operations

Miwa Kobayashi General Affairs and Accounting

Value Proposition

Experience

Teneo Partners will celebrate its 17th anniversary in December of this year. There are only a few independent, foreign owned boutique Financial Instruments Business Operators that are fully authorized to hold a Type-1 and Type-2 license like Teneo. Even fewer have our longevity and fewer still that have the expertise to cover all investor segments and focus exclusively on fund marketing.

Over the years we have developed an extensive network of contacts among the financial institutions in Japan and have achieved a strong reputation and name recognition within the industry.

Our professionals bring a wealth of experience across each of the investor segments giving Teneo the ability to penetrate each of them effectively.

We have experience with multiple channels of distribution and using various structures across the industry landscape to target a wide investor audience. Few, if any other placement agents have the knowledge and capability to offer the following:

Independence

Teneo Partners is majority-owned by the individual founders and executives who run the day to day business of the firm.

We do not have financial or equity ties to any bank, insurance company, investment firm or financial group. This allows us to search for the best possible sales channels regardless of the affiliation of the investor, gatekeeper or distributor that we may choose to work with. This also precludes any conflict of interest in terms of selecting the asset management partners with whom we work.

This freedom enables us to offer an open architecture for both fund selection and fund marketing.

Culturally Blended Team

Unlike many other placement agents in Tokyo that are comprised of teams which are predominately staffed by either foreigners or Japanese nationals, Teneo Partners has a balanced and bi-cultural team.

We understand both the Japanese and Western approach to developing and managing business relationships. This means we can read the nuances that are frequently missed by both the offshore manager and the Japanese investor. As a result, we are more readily able to bridge the communication gap and produce more effective marketing results.

Our team of native English speakers help to streamline the interaction with offshore managers, raising both the efficiency and the effectiveness of the communication.

At the core of our marketing team are experienced Japanese salespeople who excel in maneuvering within Japanese investor institutions, maximizing our impact within those organizations.

Funds Focused Business

Although as a Type 1 and Type 2 Financial Instruments Business Operator we are licensed to deal in the entire range of financial products and securities, our exclusive focus is on the marketing of funds. Unlike many of our competitors who have turned to other lines of businesses to augment their income streams, we have a singular activity and purpose.

Flexibility

With fifteen employees, we are one of the largest boutique marketers of funds in Tokyo. We have the resources necessary to meet our clients’ needs but are also small enough to be nimble and able to customize our offering to meet the needs of each asset manager client.

Because Teneo Partners is managed by its owners, we are unencumbered by extensive organizational decision-making processes and the constraints of a large organization. We are both very responsive and very flexible when it comes to offering customized and innovative services for marketing funds in Japan.

Licensing and Compliance

The importance of our securities licenses, the like of which are generally held by much larger organizations or purely domestic broker-dealers, cannot be overstated. That we hold both the Type-1 and Type-2 business licenses separates us from almost all of the other offshore fund placement agents in the Japan marketplace.

Asset managers coming to Japan or those who utilize global placement agents to market their funds in Japan should be careful to review the Japanese securities regulations concerning the solicitation for investment into their funds. Teneo Partners is a compliance driven organization and we foster a culture of superior corporate governance. There are two compliance professionals within our team of fifteen, one of whom was the Compliance Director at Shinko Asset Management, one of the predecessor companies to Asset Management One, the largest asset management and mutual fund company in Japan.

Your Bridge to Success

Cross Border Fund Marketing