“The Asian hedge fund industry has all the hallmarks of a teenager,” says Rob Appleby, co-founder of ADM Capital, one of Asia’s longer-lived hedge funds. “From the outside it looks extraordinarily ugly, but it works.”

His remark is meant humorously, but in one way, he is dead right: the Asian hedge fund industry is beginning to grow up. Truly Asia-based funds, with $140bn of assets under management, still make up just 7 per cent of the global industry’s total, but some managers are maturing, as are investors’ attitudes toward them.

There are now between 15 and 20 funds in the region with upwards of $1bn in assets under management – and the professionalism with which these larger funds are being managed and operated means they cannot be described as grubby adolescents.