Little more than a year after losing its high-profile proxy battle with Japan’s largest electric utility, The Children’s Investment Fund Management is getting out of Asia entirely.
The Japanese government pulled out all the stops to keep the activist hedge fund from getting its hands on a bigger chunk of Electric Power Development Co., better known as J-Power. But it could hardly imagine that its stand against the “national security threat” presented by TCI would drive the hedge fund off the continent entirely.
Its Japanese defeat–which cost TCI $130 million–was followed earlier this year by the departure of John Ho, the hedge fund’s top executive in Asia and the pointman for its J-Power bid. Last month, TCI closed its Hong Kong office, and the London firm has sold off most of its investments in Asia and has approached other hedge funds in the region about buying what’s left of its portfolios there.

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