Blackstone to Anchor Asia Market-Neutral Fund by Two Sigma Alum

Blackstone intends to anchor z Star Research with an initial commitment of about $300 million, supporting an Asia-focused market-neutral quantitative equity fund run by Jinger Zhao. The fund is planned to begin trading in the second quarter of next year.

Jinger Zhao spent 18 years at Two Sigma Investments, most recently leading Asia-Pacific investment strategies. Her work covered market-neutral, long-only and futures approaches. She has a background in computer science and software engineering and is building a systematic equity platform for Asian markets.

The strategy will operate on a market-neutral mandate and trade systematically across Asian equities. The team aims to exploit relative-value opportunities while limiting net market exposure through paired and hedged positions.

Trading is expected to start after the firm completes data infrastructure, modeling systems and execution capabilities. The firm is also formalizing capital commitments that will support initial trading capacity.

Blackstone’s absolute return platform has been in discussions to provide the cornerstone capital for the launch. Large institutional allocators have in recent years provided seed or anchor funding to start-ups led by managers with established track records and quantitative expertise.

Demand for quantitative hedge funds and multi-strategy platforms remains notable among institutional investors. Some allocators have shown interest in Asia-focused market-neutral approaches as a way to diversify exposures concentrated in U.S. equities and macro strategies. Industry data point to a modest increase in new hedge fund launches globally, with hundreds of funds starting each year as investors reassess performance and liquidity conditions.