04 Nov 2026 - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
From left: Sachin Unamboowe, AVP and Head of Sales, CAL and Moderator; Thomas Hugger, Founder and CEO, Asia Frontier Capital Ltd.; Ruchir Desai (CFA), Fund Manager, Asia Frontier Capital Ltd.; Deshan Pushparajah (CFA), Managing Director – Global Markets, CAL; and Kanishke Mannakkara, Group CEO, CAL, during the panel discussion
Capital Alliance Holdings PLC (CAL) is betting that taking control of Hong Kong-based Asia Frontier Capital (AFC) can create a business many multiples the size of either firm, with the frontier fund manager’s offshore platform set to channel global capital into frontier economies, according to CAL Group Chief Executive Officer Kanishke Mannakkara.
“We are not investing in AFC because we think AFC will grow at 10 or 15 percent a year for the next five years. We see the potential to use the brilliance that AFC has to create something that is many multiples of what AFC is, and frankly what CAL is,” Mannakkara told reporters in Colombo yesterday.
Pressed on the scale of those multiples, he steered clear of forward guidance, citing the regulatory limits on projections by a listed company, and pointed instead to the group’s track record.
“I’ll talk about the past, and I’ll let you infer from that to the future,” he remarked, noting that CAL’s assets under management (AUM) had grown roughly 15 to 17 times over the past eight years, a compound annual growth rate of around 40 to 42 percent.
AFC Fund Manager Ruchir Desai added that the net asset value (NAV) of the firm’s flagship AFC Asia Frontier Fund has doubled since end-2022. Mannakkara argued that AFC opens up a far deeper pool than CAL’s finite domestic investor base, as it “has the infrastructure to tap what is, for all intents and purposes, an infinite capital base”.
The briefing came a day after CAL disclosed to the bourse that its wholly owned Singapore arm, CAL Global Pte. Ltd., had inked a share purchase agreement for a 51 percent stake in AFC at approximately US$ 2.5 million.
The consideration implies a valuation of about US$ 4.9 million for the whole of AFC, or roughly 3.9 percent of its AUM of approximately US$ 125 million as at end-September. CAL applied to the Securities and Futures Commission of Hong Kong around a month ago and expects regulatory sign-off within two to three months, with Mannakkara insisting it is “a matter of when, not if”.
He described AFC as the “plumbing” needed to cut through the complexity that keeps global allocators out of frontier markets.
“AFC already has the infrastructure that allows global investors to easily take positions and easily channel their investments into frontier markets,” he explained.
The combined entity will manage around US$ 1.2 billion, placing it among the largest frontier-focused managers, with AFC accounting for a little over a tenth. AFC Chief Executive Officer and Fund Manager Thomas Hugger welcomed the added heft, quipping that in fund management “the big guys get everything, and the small guys like us, we have to fight for the crumbs”.
AFC also brings a presence in Vietnam, Uzbekistan and Iraq. By Mannakkara’s count, those markets add over US$ 900 billion in GDP to the roughly US$ 600 billion of Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, extending CAL’s reach to frontier economies worth about US$ 1.5 trillion, half as large again as the “over US$ 1 trillion” footprint it had targeted.
However, Mannakkara stressed that market access alone no longer commands a premium and that CAL’s priority is product creation. «My measure of true activity in a country is the ability to then create product,» he noted.
AFC currently invests only in listed equities, but its fund structure allows it to move into fixed income and unlisted equities.
He also contended that buying a manager with a 13-year track record carries less execution risk than the greenfield route CAL took in Bangladesh.
Meanwhile, AFC’s managers believe frontier markets have turned the corner after nearly a decade of foreign outflows. Desai put the cyclical bottom at end-2022, arguing that a run of crises had forced governments into reform. “The macroeconomic fundamentals, in my view, have never been stronger in our markets,” he observed.
Mannakkara blamed geopolitics rather than domestic fundamentals for the recent dent in foreign investor confidence in Sri Lanka, while Desai noted that the local market has de-rated from around 15 times earnings before the crisis to about 9 times today, even as many listed companies and banks have returned to pre-crisis earnings.
“The signal that we want to give is that frontier markets are an extraordinarily interesting place for global capital to be deployed. They’re overlooked,” Mannakkara concluded.
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