From young migrant to hot-shot stockpicker to running her own investment management company, it’s been a wild ride for TenCap founder Jun Bei Liu GAICD.
When Jun Bei Liu started her own funds management business earlier this year, she put governance and guardrails in place to allow her to grow and invest with confidence. Liu, a well-known stockpicker, left her employer, Tribeca Investment partners, and spun out the Alpha Plus hedge fund she had been running there to start her own funds management business, TenCap.
The fund’s governance guardrails allow the business to be creative and dynamic. “It’s not a cost, it just helps you as a small business know what you can and can’t do, then you can go with it,” she says. “This actually allows us to be more creative and to focus on the investment side.”
In the 19 years she worked at Tribeca, Liu’s frank, often contrarian views on stocks and companies were frequently quoted in the media. Her story so far — arriving in Australia as a teenager with no English and becoming one of the country’s best-known equity managers — is one of determination and resilience.
Making the move
Moving from managing an investment portfolio for a funds management company to starting one’s own shop can be considered a natural progression for investment professionals — although only a few actually take that step — and is something Liu had always aspired to.
She also felt that while the Alpha Plus fund she had been managing since 2018 had been successful, it had outgrown its home at Tribeca. The fund is a long-short fund, which essentially means it invests in stocks it thinks will increase in value, but also in stocks it expects to fall. However, Tribeca’s other funds were long only, so most of the analysts had a different skillset to that required to short stocks, as well as buy them.
Timing for TenCap’s market launch of the fund couldn’t have been worse — “Liberation Day” on 2 April, when US President Donald Trump announced punitive trade tariffs for American trading partners and sent investment markets into a tailspin. “It’s been a journey, but in these eight months, we’ve achieved quite a bit,” says Liu.
In starting her own investment management company, Liu identified two risks that needed managing — reputational and operational. The company established a five-person advisory board of people with experience in the operational management of funds and of governance. Members are rotated in and out of the board every three months depending on TenCap’s needs.
Early on in the TenCap story it was revealed she and co-founder Jason Todd were in a romantic relationship, which the pair attracted criticism for not disclosing. Liu says she was disappointed this created the perception of a governance problem at the company, when it was up and running, “ticking all the boxes” and had brought across clients. The pair made no attempt to hide their relationship and she questions whether an announcement was necessary, given they are only dating.
How it works
There is also separation between the operational and investment parts of the business, with Liu solely responsible for the investments and Todd taking care of the operational side. “For my clients, my performance is incredibly important and that’s what I should reward them with,” says Liu.
There is also separation on the operational side. TenCap outsources its middle and back office functions back to Tribeca and also outsources much of its legal compliance work. Built into that are independent checks. “Knowing my back end, my operational side, my settlement, everything else is going to be completely guardrailed, and that many sets of eyes will go through it, actually allows me to feel more confident to do what I do,” says Liu.
TenCap’s reputation rests on the continued success of the Alpha Plus fund, which has outperformed the benchmark ASX 200 index by close to a percentage point over the past five years, although so far in 2025 has been a little below. The business also had to meet regulatory and licensing requirements — and pass the due diligence of existing and new clients, who wanted to know how the company was set up and would operate.
Next-gen operation
Liu sees TenCap as the next generation of fund managers, taking over from those established in in the 1990s and 2000s. She believes her leadership style has changed since she left Tribeca, where she was essentially running the Alpha Plus fund solo, drawing on a pool of shared analysts. At TenCap, she has her own team of analysts and has tried to establish a strong culture where differing views are encouraged.
“Our team consists of experienced analysts, but we have young analysts as well, so it’s really just giving them the leeway to make mistakes and the right feedback loop to empower them to do it again,” she says. “It’s incredibly important to have difference in opinions. This is why selecting analysts with different backgrounds is important.In investment, you have to have diverse opinions, otherwise you have blind spots.”
The company will soon launch an active exchange traded fund (ETF), essentially a fund that holds a basket of different shares and trades on the stock exchange like a single stock. It will be the first long-short ETF in Australia and will provide an easier way to invest with the fund.
Liu envisages it will open more funds. “In the next few years, once this fund becomes full, hopefully we’ll have grown more talent internally, who will come up with the next idea. Then they can run with it.”
Liu plans to establish an independent board and chair for the company when the business’ needs become more apparent — whether people with a strong governance background or with useful connections in the funds management sector. When considering how the chair and board of a founder-led startup such as hers should operate, she says the directors should give the company’s executives leeway. “You need to give them freedom to grow, especially in the early days. But it’s important to provide guidance and round off the things they haven’t thought of.”
This is the role TenCap’s advisory board currently plays with Liu, a self-described “excitable” person who wants to get started on ideas as soon as she thinks of them. She meets the advisory board every two months and outlines her ideas. The board then questions her on different aspects and perspectives she may not have considered.
TenCap could be described as a boutique fund manager, with about $1.7b under management, but Liu has bigger ambitions. She is looking to the day when the fund has $10b under management and sees governance as key to helping achieving this. She believes the guardrails and governance frameworks, plus oversight from the advisory board and in future, corporate board, will help her continue to make the high-conviction calls that made her so successful as a stockpicker.
This article first appeared as 'Scaling to grow' in the November 2025 Issue of Company Director Magazine.
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