Aaron Low : The investment strategist

Aaron Low, president of the CFA Institute, was recently in the country for a seminar organized by CFA Society Mauritius. Meeting with Business Magazine, the financial expert talks about his career and shares his thoughts on the Mauritian financial sector.

Between seminars and his busy agenda, Aaron Low accepts to meet us at the Intercontinental Hotel, Balaclava. He is a workaholic who travels a lot for his job and the CFA Institute. Despite being the president of the CFA Institute, Aaron Low is a very low-profile person. In fact, at the very beginning of the interview, he admits that he prefers discretion and does not like to talk about himself. This is why he focuses mainly on his professional career.

It is in San Francisco, in the United States, that Aaron Low began a fruitful career in 1997 after joining RCM Global Investors (Allianz). As Head of Asian Fixed Income and Senior Portfolio Manager for RCM Global Investors, he travelled regularly from San Francisco to Singapore and vice versa.

Aaron Low helped start up and managed around USD 3 billion in institutional assets for Asian Fixed Income Portfolio Investment team. After a couple of years at RCM Global Investors, Aaron Low moved to PIMCO (Pacific Investment Management Company) in 2001. The company is situated in Newport, in the States. And as the Head of Asia ex-Japan Portfolio Management, he travelled regularly to Singapore.

At PIMCO, his job consists of overseeing and manages the portfolio investment team. He explains that for PIMCO, he managed USD 21 billion in Asian institutional and central bank global bonds. “I also helped in managing the firm’s USD 600 billion in global assets. I had the responsibility to oversee PIMCO Asian strategies.” he relates.

After PIMCO, in 2005, he left for Lumen – where he still is – which is an alternative asset management company investing in global markets. At Lumen, he is the Principal and Managing Director and he manages long and short investment strategies for institutional and retail clients, including traditional long-only funds and hedge funds.

When and why did he join the CFA Institute? Aaron Low says that he did not join the CFA Institute on his own.
Everything started when he was at RCM Global Investors. He remembered getting a phone call from the institute. His familiarity with the Asian financial market encouraged the institute to seek his help to share Asian Pacific Policy. At that time, Aaron Low was freshly CFA Chartered.

The proposal was to get engaged with regulators and governments on the good practices that should be followed in
order to be reckoned as a standard financial market. Aaron Low said “yes” and joined the CFA Institute. For the first five years, he was the Chairman of Asia Pacific. But this system was dissolved and the CFA Institute integrated everything into what they call a Capital Market Policy Community. “The mission of the CFA Institute with this new system remained the same, that is, we are engaged with regulators as FSC and essential banks across the world. Our mission is to make sure that there is good governance in the financial sector in those countries where CFA is present. The CFA Institute helps the financial industry to formulate good practices, it helps investors,” he comments.

With this new system, Aaron Low is the president of the CFA Institute and is on the Board of Governors. “CFA has now 500 full-time working staff and, on top of that, there is the Board of Governors. I became one of its members, five years ago. And it’s only last year that I was nominated president of the CFA Institute,” he points out.

What is the vision of the CFA Institute for Mauritius? “What we want to do is to advance the mission and the vision of the CFA Institute, which include the codes of ethics, the professional standards and conduct within the society membership, and regulatory bodies”, says Aaron Low.

In Mauritius, the CFA Institute supports CFA Society Mauritius by providing it with quality programs and services. It is also trying to establish a strong sense of community and share va-lues with the Mauritian members. “And we want to work towards being a leader in this community in Mauritius, within the country and the region,” he reveals.

Furthermore, Aaron Low delivers his impressions on the financial sector of Mauritius. He strongly thinks that the island has impressive aspirations and ambitions and can become a regional financial center. According to him, all the conditions are met. “I think Mauritius has a strong leadership and it does have an outlook focus which is a key essential to achieve those things. It has good incentives and legal system. Even if its financial sector is young compared to that of other countries, it has huge potential,” he observes.

However, the sector needs to further build up its infrastructure and its ecosystem to be a truly global financial center. “To become a global financial center, you need to have a huge amount of human talents and a skill pool. Mauritius has to develop that pool of people,” he recommends.

In addition, Mauritius needs to further understand the global current that is shifting in the market place, provoked by the global financial crisis. “There has been a change in the landscape of how banks and financial firms interact with regulators and the investment community, and it’s not as friendly as it was before. There are many things that have shifted,” he adds.

Commenting on the BAI saga, Aaron Low says the Mauritian financial sector should take the positive out of it. “All countries go through this kind of episode and I don’t think that any center has been spared. I think it gives us a good lesson on what needs to be done and on what one has to focus,” he comments, conceding that such an incident may discourage investors. Right now, the Mauritian financial sector needs to restore trust among investors. The CFA Institute can play a major role on this front, the financial expert believes.