Manulife backs spinout from Hong Kong’s JIDA

Albamen Capital Partners set up in 2019 by Raymond Fung through the acquisition of an approximately 20-strong team, investment track record, and intellectual property from JIDA, which Fung founded in 2012. JIDA is currently winding down operations and selling its portfolio. This is expected to take 6-12 months. Fung's co-managaing partner at Albamen is Conrad Yan, previously a partner at placement agent Campbell Lutyens.

JIDA is one of few private equity firms focused solely on clean energy in China. It was established by Fung - who ran the private equity arm of China General Nuclear Power - with support New Zealand-based infrastructure investor HRL Morrison.

The investment is part of Manulife’s broader private markets buildout plan for Asia. The idea is to bring Asian investment capabilities to the global organization through fund commitments and acquiring GP stakes, helping institutionalize managers, and eventually integrating them into the global platform. Manulife has an option to take a controlling stake in Albamen within two years.

“This is probably the best China infrastructure clean energy private equity team in the market,” Myron Zhu, Manulife’s head of private markets Asia, told AVCJ. “The majority of the senior members are industrialists, coming from operational backgrounds building projects from the ground up. That brings them a unique angle and approach to cleantech infrastructure investing in China. We haven’t seen anyone able to do that with a proven, on-the-ground China team.”

Albamen’s experience as JIDA includes the full deployment of a RMB3.7 million ($530 million) fund on almost 1 gigawatt’s worth of renewable energy assets. LPs in the JIDA fund were primarily China-based fund-of-funds, banks, insurers, and state-owned enterprises. Albamen hopes to internationalize this network going forward.

The new firm is in the process of applying for licenses and registration to launch its debut fund, after which Manulife is expected to provide $100 million in seed funding. Manulife also expects to be an active co-investor.

Zhu emphasized that Manulife’s commitment to Albamen underlined strong confidence in the Chinese renewables and data center space. This outlook includes significant disruption to traditional energy generation segments and an expected rising in new business models servicing digital infrastructure such as energy-as-a-service.

“Both solar and wind have already reached cost parity compared to tradition fuels in China, largely thanks to industrialized manufacturing capacity bringing down the overall cost of solar and wind equipment,” Zhu said. “With improvement in connectivity through data infrastructure, we will increasing have smart grids. With improvement in battery technology and storage, clean energy will start to be much more widely adopted, even without government subsidies. It’s becoming a very viable alternative to traditional fuel energy.”

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• Topics
• Greater China
• GPs
• LPs
• Cleantech
• Infrastructure
• Hong Kong (China)
• China
• Manulife
• JIDA Capital
• Spin outs
• energy
• data center