Newly launched Asia-based placement agent New Peak Partners will be a “full-service platform” to help GPs navigate uncertain conditions, said Joshua Kahn, the firm’s co-managing partner.

“We are not building a business purely to raise Asia-focused funds. We are looking to work with those GPs across a variety of disciplines. We can address GPs that want to have an Asia-only fundraising mandate, and that’s a growing component of the fundraising market,” he told AVCJ.

“And for Asia-based GPs, we can help them with liquidity solutions, we can help them on the transaction front by sourcing deals that come through our networks, we can help them raise fund-less capital, and we can help in strategic consulting through our knowledge and experience of GP business building.”

Kahn joins New Peak after a decade at Asia-based merchant banking platform Ion Pacific, where he led a GP advisory business that focused on these areas. The name New Peak was inspired by the Old Peak entity Kahn established on leaving Hamilton Lane in 2014 that was ultimately absorbed into Ion Pacific.

The new firm’s value proposition is based on combining Kahn’s advisory skillset with the fundraising capabilities of Monument Group’s Asia team, which has spent much of the last 12 months negotiating an amicable separation from its US-based parent. Kahn’s co-managing partner is Niklas Amundsson, who spent 10 years leading Monument’s Asia operation and before that worked for MVision.

Three professionals have followed Amundsson from Monument, including Albert Jun, who has become a partner at New Peak. The fourth partner, Catherine Mooney, is not a Monument alumnus. She worked with Amundsson at MVision through 2015 and was then at Asante Capital Group for about five years.

The team is based in Hong Kong, but it has an avenue into Japan through an ongoing relationship with Monument, which retained its presence – and headcount – in Tokyo despite withdrawing from other Asian markets. New Peak is Monument’s reciprocal sub-agent in the region, which means it has first look on Asia-related mandates taken on by the US-based operation, Kahn explained.

On New Peak’s multiple business lines, Kahn observed that “the more flexibility we have, the better off we will be” in an uncertain environment. He was equivocal as to which line would be the primary revenue driver, while noting that overseas GPs looking to raise capital from Asian LPs is a prevalent theme.

“As the mid-market grows in the US and Europe – and as GPs look to mitigate LP turnover in their home markets – they need new pools of capital. At the same time, LPs in Asia have come up the private markets curve and are looking to deploy into these funds,” Kahn said.

As for Asia-based managers, the region is bearing the brunt of a challenging fundraising environment globally. PE and VC managers in Asia – excluding those in the renminbi-denominated fund space – raised USD 45.9bn in 2024, a 10-year low, according to AVCJ Research. Difficulties continued into 1Q25 when USD 7.6bn was raised. The trailing average for the prior eight quarters is USD 14.8bn.

This has filtered through to the placement agent community. Kahn believes New Peak can prevail because of the Monument team’s strong track record working with Asian mid-cap managers and by virtue of the firm pursuing a “more wide-ranging business model than some groups vacating the market.”

His recent mandates include helping a fund-less sponsor find replacement capital for an India-based asset when the existing Middle East investors wanted to get out, and sourcing co-investment for a deal that required an equity cheque beyond the reach of the manager’s fund.

This notion of building touchpoints with the GP – to the point where a liquidity solutions project feeds into a primary fundraising project – extends to helping managers with broader strategic positioning.

“We are in discussions with one GP to review their competitive standing and portfolio,” Kahn said. “This involves making recommendations about where they should take their business, how they should shape their portfolio, how they should raise capital for different portfolio companies, and how they should approach the market. It’s not a one-off mandate.”