Jimmy Hsu

Jimmy Hsu is one of the most experienced private equity and venture capital investors in Asia, with a career spanning more than four decades across sovereign wealth, fund-of-funds and direct investing. He began his career at the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB) from around 1977, where he was responsible for investment promotion and project appraisal, and spent time at British Petroleum. Notably, he also worked at Sequoia Capital in the United States in its early generation under founder Don Valentine, giving him direct exposure to Silicon Valley venture investing. He is a Singapore Government Colombo Plan Scholar, holds a Bachelor of Engineering from the University of Alberta (Canada) and an MBA from the National University of Singapore, and is a CFA charterholder.

Hsu spent roughly 15 years at GIC Special Investments (GIC SI), the private equity arm of the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation, where he held senior management roles heading its offices across the US, Europe and Asia, investing in venture capital, growth capital and leveraged buyout funds and directing co-investments. In January 2003 he became CEO of TIF Ventures Pte Ltd — a fund-of-funds vehicle co-owned by the Singapore government (EDB) and originally co-managed with the National Science and Technology Board — where over roughly five years he managed a global portfolio of about US$1.5 billion.

In October 2007, Hsu co-founded Eagle Asia Partners with fellow TIF Ventures senior managers Kit Jong Tan, Lay Hong Lee and Ivy Omar — a team that had worked together since 1999 and collectively held more than 80 years of private equity experience. Eagle Asia Partners (whose site is eaglecps.com) is an independent Singapore-based private equity fund-of-funds manager focused on Asia; it raised Eagle NPE Asia Fund I (2008) and Eagle Asia Fund II (2011). In December 2018 the firm merged with Caspian Private Equity and Euro Private Equity to form Flexstone Partners, an affiliate of Natixis Investment Managers, where Hsu served as Managing Director, Investments and led the Singapore office and sat on the Asia Investment Committee until the end of April 2022.

Since leaving Flexstone in 2022, Hsu has continued as a principal at Eagle (Eagle CPS) and serves as Chairman of Phoenix-5 (pnx5.com), a boutique advisory and investment firm with a team drawn from institutions such as JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Lazard and Sequoia, operating across Singapore, Hong Kong, Seoul, London, New York and Los Angeles. In this later chapter he is positioned as an angel/seed-stage investor and advisor to founders.

• Stage: Personal activity is angel and seed-stage; his institutional track record centers on private equity, venture capital, growth capital and buyout funds, plus direct co-investments.
• Geography: Deep Asia focus — Greater China, India and Southeast Asia in particular — with global reach into North America and Europe from decades of cross-regional fund investing.
• Firm mandate (Eagle Asia Partners): "Selective investments in Asian private equity funds, secondary and direct co-investment opportunities in Asia, with particular emphasis in China, India and Southeast Asia."
• What makes him say yes: A fund-of-funds and co-investment discipline built at GIC and TIF — backing strong managers and teams with proven track records; his Sequoia/Don Valentine exposure and engineering background lean him toward technology and founder quality.
• Value-add: Decades of institutional LP relationships, board/investment-committee experience, and access to a cross-border network of PE, VC and banking professionals through Phoenix-5.