PEOPLE
We comprise a combination of transactional expertise in private equity, real estate, and investment management in Asia.
Michael Short
Chairman
Mr. Short has lived and worked in Asia for over 35 years. For 24 years he held positions with Citibank, including Division Executive for Global Japanese Corporate Businesses, Asian Regional Marketing, Credit Risk Management, and Product Development. Assignments included Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, and the UK. In 1998, he was seconded to lead strategic investment projects for the Brunei Investment Agency.
In 1999, Mr. Short joined AXA as CEO and Country Head for their Japanese insurance businesses. There he oversaw the acquisition and integration of Nippon Dantai Insurance Co. and became CEO of a combined operation with 450 nationwide offices, 10,000 employees, and over 5 million customers. In 2005, Mr. Short joined W.J. Hopper & Co. Ltd., a boutique investment bank based in London that focuses on alternative investments, to develop private equity investments in Asia-Pacific. From 2009 to the present, he became a full time partner at Valparaiso Capital Partners.
He has a Bachelor’s of Science from Sophia University in Tokyo, and Master’s of Business Administration from Thunderbird Graduate School of Business. He is a member of the Thunderbird Global Council, and Director Emeritus of the Thunderbird Private Equity Center. He is fluent in Japanese and is an American national.
Aaron Kim
Managing Partner
Tom Chapman
Partner
Ken Fagan
General Counsel
Alex Lin
Executive Director
Mr. Kim has been involved in real estate and principal investing since 1997 in Asia, leveraging his experience in corporate finance, investment banking, and real estate development. He has directly managed construction, tenant leasing, design development, and development approvals for Valparaiso’s projects. Before Valparaiso, he was Executive Director at AXA Japan which acquired Nippon Group Life for $2 billion and where he was responsible for restructuring of administrative operations, six sigma, BPO, and other turnaround activities.
He worked for the Brunei Investment & Commercial Bank, advising on investment and corporate finance projects after the 1997 Currency Crisis. From 1990 -1997, he worked at Citibank in New York, Hong Kong and Singapore in corporate finance, advisory and strategic planning assignments. Mr. Kim has a Bachelors of Science in Business Administration and Masters degree in Economics from Boston University. He has working fluency in Japanese and Korean. He is an American national.
Mr. Chapman is an experienced fund manager and private investment professional with specific real estate development experience in Asia since 1997. He is a founding principal of Teewinot Partners LLC, a principal investor with a focus in international real estate assets. During his career, he has been involved in over $1.4 billion of transactional value in Asian real estate.
Previously, he was a founding member of Colony Capital LLC’s Asian business operation in Singapore. He has also worked at Tiger Management Corporation and Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. Mr. Chapman started his career at Tudor Investment Corporation in London. While at Tudor, he was the first Tudor employee to research/evaluate the corporate expansion into China in the mid ’90s.
He was appointed by the Governor of Wyoming as a Trustee and serves as Chair of the Investment and the Deferred Compensation Committees of the Wyoming Retirement System. Tom also serves on the Executive Committee and is Secretary for Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) and was the Investment Chair for four years. He is on the Board of Directors of Tropical Wave Corporation in Vietnam and served on the Board of Nirvana Capital in Hong Kong. He previously served as a member of the Board of Visitors at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has a Bachelor’s of Arts from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a Master’s in Business Administration from Columbia University.
Mr. Fagan is General Counsel and head of compliance for Valparaiso. He has been an attorney specializing in banking and compliance for over 30 years, with 20 years’ experience in Asia, Middle East and Central Europe.
From 2008-2013, Mr. Fagan served as global head of the Legal, Compliance and Secretariat function of DBS Bank Ltd. in Singapore. During this time, he managed a large global legal and compliance team responsible for AML, FCPA, UK Bribery Act, FATCA, Dodd-Frank and US and EU sanctions compliance as well as MAS, HKMA and other relationships with monetary and regulatory authorities.
From 1994-2008, Mr. Fagan served as Citibank’s first dedicated – Asia regional legal counsel for its consumer banking business and also served for several years as Citibank’s senior regional counsel for its corporate bank.
Having started his career in 1983 at Citibank New York, he has held several positions, including Chairman of the Board of Citibank Limited, Australia, a wholly owned Citigroup deposit taking institution, from 2000 to 2002 where he provided corporate governance oversight to this entity. He has also served as member of the Board of Directors of Citibank Berhad, Malaysia.
Mr. Fagan was named one of the top 25 Asia in-house counsel of the year (2010) by Asian Legal Business magazine. He is licensed to practice law in New York and before the Supreme Court of the United States, and has a Bachelor of Arts from Fordham University, a Master of Arts from Emory University and a law degree from New York University School of Law. He is an American national and is a Permanent Resident of Singapore.
Alex Lin is an experienced investment banker in M&A and equity capital markets. From 2010-2015, he was Associate Director at HSBC Investment Banking division in Hong Kong covering blue-chip corporate clients and completed several landmark real estate M&A and IPO transactions. Prior to HSBC, he worked 3 years at Morgan Stanley in the investment banking division in Hong Kong. He has a strong track record particularly in corporate finance and advisory for real estate clients in Asia.
In addition to his investment banking work, Mr. Lin is also an experienced auditor and a Certified Public Accountant. He was previously an auditor at KPMG in Mountain View, California, and a transaction advisory consultant at Ernst & Young in Los Angeles, California.
He has a dual degree from the University of California at Berkeley, with a Bachelor's of Arts in Economics and a Bachelor's of Science in Business Administration, at the Haas School of Business. He is married, fluent in Mandarin and is a U.S. citizen.