MONTHLY HIGHLIGHT - Jan 2026 Pine Capital Management - 2025 Year Reflection Letter
- hubert116
- 14 hours ago
- 8 min read
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As we close 2025, Pine Partners Day held in Bangkok last November was a meaningful moment to reflect on how far Pine has grown and evolved. In particular, 2025 was a year in which connectivity across our three core Asian hubs Singapore, Korea, and Thailand strengthened more than ever. Singapore firmly established itself as our trusted base for investment structuring and cross-border advisory. Korea entered a re-rating phase supported by industrial competitiveness and governance reform. Thailand saw tangible outcomes driven by closer collaboration among key clients.
Against this backdrop, 2025 marked a year of significant change and progress across our investment portfolio, organization, and client base. We rebranded from Pine Venture Partners to Pine Capital Management, evolving from a venture-focused investment house into a Singapore-based multi-family office and integrated asset manager. What began as a single venture fund has expanded into a multi-asset platform. Pine Asia Growth Fund I delivered a 30 percent IRR, validating our Southeast Asia investment capabilities, while Pine Asia Growth Fund II continues to back globally expanding companies in Korea and Singapore, maintaining solid performance and follow-on outcomes despite a challenging VC environment.
We also expanded into public equities across the US and Asia. In 2025, our US equity portfolio generated strong returns. In Korea, we pursued an activist strategy aligned with structural shifts such as governance reform and the expansion of electronic AGMs, delivering meaningful results. Our allocation to Korean equities achieved strong performance within this environment.
Building on our accumulated track record, we continue to diversify our investment products. In 2025, we expanded our offerings to include a US listed equities fund and a Korea activist fund. In 2026, we are preparing to launch a US real estate investment fund. Alongside this, we are developing strategies in structured credit and Singapore-Malaysia SME buyouts, evolving into a multi-strategy platform spanning venture capital, public equities, private buyouts, real estate, and credit. Venture, private equity, and public equities are managed directly in-house, while hedge funds and real estate strategies are accessed through partnerships with top-tier global managers.
Strengthening Local Talent and Organizational Capabilities
2025 was also a turning point for our team. We moved beyond a Korea-centric organization and significantly strengthened our Singapore-based team. We onboarded experienced professionals across public equities, private investment, and operations and back-office functions, enhancing both investment depth and operational resilience. This organizational upgrade forms a critical foundation for Pine’s next stage of global growth.
A More Global Client Base
Our client base has diversified meaningfully as well. While Pine initially served primarily Korean investors, today we work with investors across Thailand, Singapore, Latin America, and beyond, who trust Pine as a Northeast and Southeast Asia-focused investment platform. We act as both an investment and advisory partner with deep local market understanding, connecting global clients and coordinating cross-regional capital flows. In particular, throughout 2025, our role expanded further as ultra-high-net-worth families from the UK, Europe, and the US sought to establish long-term investment exposure to Asia.
Areas for Further Improvement and Focus Going Forward
We are equally clear-eyed about the areas where further strengthening is required. Looking ahead to 2026, we expect a year marked by heightened complexity. This includes increased geopolitical risk driven by US foreign and military policy, rising global tensions around resources and security highlighted by issues involving Venezuela and Greenland, heightened market volatility stemming from shifts in interest-rate conditions, potential corrections in US equities amid elevated valuations, policy uncertainty surrounding the US midterm elections in November, and concurrent weakness in the Japanese yen and Korean won.
In response, we will prioritize building a more resilient and sustainable operating framework. This includes further strengthening risk management, enhancing portfolio diversification, and reinforcing liquidity and defensive asset management capabilities.
Our key focus areas include:
Investment stability, risk management, and operating infrastructure: We will enhance our risk management framework to respond more effectively to market volatility. Data-driven processes and automated, AI-enabled monitoring will improve consistency and stability in portfolio management. At the same time, we will continue to upgrade internal systems and processes to support growth, while strengthening transparent data management and reporting.
Differentiated value proposition: Leveraging our global partnerships and cross-border network, we will continue to deliver investment opportunities and advisory value that are uniquely differentiated to Pine.
Sustainable growth and scale: Drawing lessons from 2025, we will re-engage our growth objectives through disciplined performance and capital raising, aiming to grow alongside our investors over the long term.
Enhanced client communication: We will improve the speed and clarity of information sharing through automated reporting, regular meetings, and structured updates to further strengthen communication with our clients.
In this sense, 2025 was a year in which Pine Capital Management both strengthened its strategy and organization and clearly recognized the challenges ahead. In 2026, through disciplined execution, we will enhance our platform across Singapore-Malaysia buyout investments, focused allocation in Korea, and continued improvements in data, reporting, and transparency. We will also further solidify our role as a cross-border hub connecting global family offices and institutional investors seeking long-term exposure to Asia.
We look forward to continuing our partnership with you and delivering results with consistency and integrity in the year ahead. Thank you for your continued trust and support.
If you’d like to join or receive our materials, please reach out to me directly at ht@pinevp.com.
Hyuk-Tae Kwon
Founder and CEO
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At the intersection of Governance and Structural Change: Why Pine Invested in Bside
by Investment Manager Joel Kam
Across Asia, capital markets are undergoing a meaningful transformation. Shareholder engagement, once largely reactive and compliance-driven, is becoming more institutionalized as regulatory reforms, stewardship codes, and evolving governance standards reshape how companies interact with their investors. In Korea, this shift has been reinforced by the introduction and tightening of the Stewardship Code, revisions to corporate governance frameworks, and recent policy initiatives aimed at improving capital efficiency and shareholder returns. These changes are unfolding alongside a sharp rise in market participation: the number of retail investors more than doubled from approximately 6 million in 2019 to nearly 14 million by 2021, fundamentally changing the shareholder landscape and increasing expectations for transparency, communication, and accountability at listed companies.
At the same time, Korea faces a parallel structural challenge outside the public markets: SME succession. Government-linked data shows that more than 30% of SME owners are now aged 60 or above, with a growing number approaching retirement without clear succession plans. Given that SMEs account for roughly 99% of Korean enterprises and over 80% of total employment, failed succession represents not just a private business issue, but a systemic economic risk. As a result, policymakers and financial institutions have begun actively promoting M&A as a solution—through tax incentives, matching platforms, and the emergence of domestic search funds—closely mirroring Japan’s experience over the past decade. Bside operates at the intersection of these two structural shifts. Founded in 2021, the company is a comprehensive digital platform designed to modernize and professionalize the entire shareholder meeting lifecycle. Bside helps to digitalize shareholder registers received from the Korea Securities Depository, enabling rapid data cleansing, structured shareholder classification, and advanced analytics. Bside’s platform significantly enhances operational efficiency while reinforcing transparency and risk control throughout the shareholders’ meeting process. Since inception, Bside has successfully executed more than 30 shareholder campaigns with a perfect track record, an exceptional outcome in high-stakes governance situations where precision, trust, and coordination are critical.
Bside Korea’s differentiation lies in its end-to-end, execution-focused approach grounded in extensive real-world experience. The firm is uniquely positioned as the only provider in Korea with a proven track record across all types of shareholder meetings, including highly contested control and proxy fights. This depth of experience is embedded directly into its platform, enabling a one-stop solution covering shareholder data management, proxy verification, vote aggregation, and scenario analysis. The platform empowers IR teams and management to operate as a unified front, ensuring stable, strategic, and future-ready shareholder meeting operations in an increasingly demanding governance environment. Pine views Bside not as a cyclical advisory firm, but as foundational infrastructure for better-functioning capital markets. We are excited to partner with the team as they scale the platform, explore regional expansion, and deepen synergies across governance, IR, and M&A.
Jan 2026 - Fourth Time Lucky?
by Investment Director Larry Lau
After three straight years of S&P 500 gains totalling +86% (total returns), the obvious question is whether 2026 delivers a fourth. Since 1926, there have been 13 three-year winning streaks; 7 went on to a fourth up year, 6 did not— roughly even odds. Digging deeper, streaks that continued were typically preceded by ~55% three-year gains, whereas streaks that broke were preceded by much larger ~84% gains.
We opened with that teaser intentionally: today’s setup sits closer to the ~80% bucket, with most valuation measures highly elevated after the multi-year rally. If we must venture a guess, we’d expect positive full-year returns in 2026, alongside at least two intra-year drawdowns exceeding 10%. With valuations near highs and investor positioning increasingly stretched, less-good news can be treated as bad news.
None of this simple historical framing drives our decisions. As we’ve reiterated, we remain constructive for Q1 2026 on a backdrop of re-accelerating U.S. growth (YoY %) and disinflation. Historically, that economic environment favours small and mid-cap stocks (SMIDs), which is why we initiated a ~10% allocation to a Russell 2000 ETF in late December 2025.
A constructive Q1 does not mean an absence of volatility; it means we are more inclined to buy pullbacks when they occur. As a cross-check on sentiment, Michael Hartnett, a well-regarded strategist from Bank of America noted last week that cash positions in their Global Fund Manager Survey (FMS) reached a record low of 3.3% and the bank's 'Bull & Bear Indicator' has reached a high of 9.0, triggering a sell signal. Given the recent run, we have lifted cash to high single digits, and will raise it to double digits should our internal overbought composite signal trigger (close but not yet).
Copyright (C) 2026 Pine Capital Management. All rights reserved.
This material is provided for general information purposes only and does not take into account the specific investment objectives, financial circumstances, or particular needs of any individual. You are encouraged to consult a qualified financial adviser before making any investment decisions. Historical performance and any forward-looking statements regarding the economy, stock, bond market, economic or industry trends should not be relied upon as indicators of future results. Past performance is not indicative of future returns. Opinions expressed may change without notice and should not be interpreted as personalised advice or a recommendation. Any references to specific securities (if applicable) are for illustrative purposes only. This publication has not been reviewed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore.
