Hong Kong-based GaveKal Capital is prepping its first U.S. domiciled mutual fund by importing a strategy it is currently using for a European UCITS scheme. The GaveKal Platform Company Fund will feature the same manager -- Steven Vannelli -- as the Irish-domiciled Gavekal Platform Company Fund that GaveKal launched in 2006.

The filing suggests that the fund is planned for September [SEC filing]. GaveKal offers four other UCITS investing in Asia.

Platform companies are a concept introduced by Charles Gave, Louis-Vincent Gave, and Anatole Kaletsky (GaveKal) in their book Our Brave New World.

The trio posit that modern companies are bifurcating into first world operations focused on design, marketing, branding and distribution while sending the manufacturing to China and lesser developed countries in Asia and elsewhere (think Apple, or and distribution focus mutual fund complex relying on subadvisors for asset management for that matter).

While Hong Kong-based GaveKal has an international flavor, the father-and-son Gaves are French citizens while Keletsky lives in London where the firm has a research office (it has another in Beijing). Son Louis-Vincent studied at Duke and Nanjing University in Beijing, worked in London after leaving the French army but before moving to Hong Kong.

Fund PM Vannelli, on the other hand, is based in Denver where he has been a long-time resident (he graduated from the University of Denver). He spent a decade at Denver-based Alexander Capital before signing on with GaveKal.

Milwaukee-based Grand Distribution Services, LLC is the distributor for the fund while Mutual Fund Administration Corporation and UMB Fund Services are the co-administrators. The custodian is UMB Bank.

The fund is a series of the Investment Managers Series Trust and will be sold in an advisor class carrying a 25 basis point 12b-1 fee and an institutional class. Additional fees and operating expenses were not part of the filing. 

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