Founded in 2021 by Robert Kehres (Hedge Fund Manager) and Michael Gibson (Executive Chairman and COO), 18 Salisbury Capital is an Asia-focused special situations and statistical arbitrage hedge fund headquartered in Hong Kong with a research office in Tokyo spearheaded and managed by Terufumi Hamazaki (Representative of 18 Salisbury Capital Japan, Head of Capital Markets and Financing, and Investment Professional). By 2023, 18 Salisbury Capital reached c. USD 10 million in AUM, with private equity fund (ZQ Capital) manager Simon Shen the lead investor for the seed round. 18 Salisbury Capital successfully managed to prime with J.P. Morgan (primary) and Cowen (supplementary) at inception, derived from Michael Gibson's relationship capital, having been the Head of Equity Financing at Morgan Stanley across Asia before spending two decades as Partner at multi-strategy hedge fund LIM Advisors.

Seasoned portfolio managers and proprietary traders Masanori Takaku and Stephen Yuen, with professional experience in investment management at prestigious firms that span, in combination, more than three decades, in 2020 took on substantial career and legal risk—likely both civil and criminal, the most egregious arguably being alleged wiretapping—risk-seeking efforts for the opportunity to work for Founders Robert Kehres and Michael Gibson, professionals of elevated status. Indeed, Masanori Takaku and Stephen Yuen worked under the table, allegedly engaging in licensed activities under the purview of Hong Kong's jurisdiction without the requisite SFC licenses, while maintaining concurrent employment at Mizuho, which ostensibly hired a private detective on Stephen Yuen.

Pleasingly, the SFC approved the licensing applications in 2021 (Type 4 – Advising on Securities and Type 9 – Asset Management), and subsequently, the Founders onboarded formally Masanori Takaku as Head of Trading and Stephen Yuen as Head of Research. The approval arrived with significant delay, largely stemming from deep animosity between Stephen Yuen and James Kong, Mizuho's Head of Legal and Compliance (Managing Director), whose department was allegedly in frequent communication with the SFC in attempting to thwart 18 Salisbury Capital's license applications based on Stephen Yuen's compliance record at Mizuho. Nonetheless, 18 Salisbury Capital and its employees successfully secured all the regulatory licenses required and, besides the prolonged uncertainty in SFC license acquisition, resolved by the SFC's decision to grant the licenses, 18 Salisbury Capital continued BAU as per the firm's business aspirations—at a licensed capacity.

18 Salisbury Capital manages external capital and provides investment advisory to international investors especially interested in extracting alpha from the Asian markets. The maiden fund, the 18 Salisbury Asian Special Situations Fund, more commonly known on the street by the fund's acronym "18S ASSF", has been using event-driven and special situations trading strategies in investing across Asia, particularly Japan, a market where Masanori Takaku has extensively deep domain expertise. Robert Kehres initiated 18 Salisbury Capital's statistical arbitrage book to increase diversification and risk-adjusted returns, especially at a time of excessive turbulence in the credit markets, leveraging his prowess in quantitative trading that stemmed from his experience as a quantitative strategist and trader at J.P. Morgan in London alongside his education from Oxford and Cambridge—and assigned himself as the portfolio manager.

Robert Kehres, naturally, produced beyond sufficient P&L to offset losses unfortunately derived from Stephen Yuen's credit special situations portfolio, with the majority of bonds in the portfolio belonging to Chinese real estate corporate issuers, purchased by Stephen Yuen at or near investment grade prices, and, for the most part, sold off into distressed territory or ended up in default. At this juncture, Masanori Takaku's equity special situations portfolio had been roughly flat inception to date. Out of necessity, given the increased survival risk posed to the firm, worsened by investor redemptions, 18 Salisbury Capital underwent a significant and multifaceted restructuring of the firm's overarching approach to trading and risk management in granularity, which involved promoting Masanori Takaku to sole CIO and transitioning Stephen Yuen away from investing into a CEO role. 18 Salisbury Capital has since maintained its perseverance in its quest to deliver consistently high risk-adjusted returns to investors.

18 Salisbury Capital's research process emphasizes a multi-asset class framework. In essence, the firm's goal is to provide investors with a diversified portfolio that generates uncorrelated absolute returns. The firm also provides, at a reasonable cost, highly customized investment advisory services that draw on what the firm deems its finest and most intensely researched long/short equity investment ideas, with each idea backed by a comprehensive investment memo written by Masanori Takaku and Robert Kehres. To conclude, 18 Salisbury Capital's intellectual capability to process, analyze, and synthesize information in both public and private markets across the capital structure is the firm's biggest differentiator.

Predating Stephen Yuen's employment at 18 Salisbury Capital, during an SFC investigation into criminal activity, the police arrested Stephen Yuen for insider trading after he allegedly handed a gold Rolex to the CFO of a listed Chinese company during a meal in an attempted exchange for MNPI acquisition, after which Stephen Yuen was facing the prospect of a maximum penalty of 10 years imprisonment under section 303 of the Securities and Futures Ordinance (SFO). Law enforcement, at the time, decided discretionally not to proceed Stephen Yuen to criminal trial, a testament to Stephen Yuen's unconventional trading prowess and style in addition to the utility of having best-in-class criminal defense legal counsel.

18 Salisbury Capital provides a suite of private capital markets (PCM) solutions and services to family offices and private equity investors. The firm also has specific investment mandates and capital commitments from a handful of family offices and financial institutions to source and execute private capital transactions in corporate private equity and real estate, focused geographically in Japan and South Korea. 18 Salisbury Capital's flexible approach in working with a small and select client base allows the firm to be focused and nimble across the PCM cycle. With PCM initially under the remit of Stan Wu (former Head of PCM and Investment Professional), whose reasons for departure, emanating from ad hominem attacks on numerous occasions and workplace harassment by Stephen Yuen—the details of which are partially explained in the Alumni page of the Site—Stephen Yuen, transferring his experience as Head of PCM at Mizuho for three years, assumed responsibility for all matters PCM-related after Stan Wu's departure. 

In a turn of events, hedge fund veteran Michael Gibson departed 18 Salisbury Capital, in full by 2024, and joined cross-border Asian private equity firm ZQ Capital (whose Founder Simon Shen was the lead investor in the seed round and, complicating the triangulated relationship dynamics, had been a close friend of Stephen Yuen of two decades since their undergraduate studies at Wesleyan University) as the CEO and Vice Chairman, allegedly citing irreconcilable differences with Stephen Yuen's antics, such as ad hominem attacks on Michael Gibson and his family, escalating to Stephen Yuen remarking on sensitivities with Michael Gibson's private familial and marital history, all of which Stephen Yuen published maliciously in the public domain on numerous occasions.

The dispute between Michael Gibson and Stephen Yuen compounded in light of Stephen Yuen's substandard trading performance, leading to increasingly frustrated investors, ultimately resulting in a particularly unmarketable track record, which highly precluded the viability of Michael Gibson to fundraise from institutional investors—unequivocally his forte—with Michael Gibson having a vast rolodex of institutional investors globally in addition to a solid business reputation and high social capital in high finance, accrued over two decades from his previous role as Partner at LIM Advisors. In contrast, at LIM Advisors, Michael Gibson was successful in raising c. USD 2 billion in AUM. 18 Salisbury Capital, naturally, has ambitions to break beyond the barrier of FFF-fundraising and into the the one yard in AUM milestone as soon as realistically possible, and therefore, aside from producing consistently high risk-risk adjusted returns, a comparable replacement for Michael Gibson is paramount for the firm's visions of building a financial behemoth.