Investment Partner, Asia
Singapore
Caroline is Circulate Capital’s Investment Partner, Asia. She has extensive experience in managing venture capital and private equity investments in the Asia-Pacific region, across different stages of enterprise development, ranging from start-ups, growth to leveraged buy-outs.
Over the last three decades, she has identified, supported the business expansion and completed profitable divestments of numerous portfolio companies through trade sales or IPOs on various stock exchange markets, navigating through three financial crises.
Caroline started her career in private equity with US firm Advent International’s Asian affiliate SEAVI-Advent in 1993, where she gained experience in South East Asia investments and IPOs before moving to Hong Kong to manage a China private equity fund for the Asian investment arm of The Bank of New York Mellon.
In 1997, She was invited to join the pioneer private equity team of ING-Barings in Asia, where she led the Greater China investment activities for Baring Communications Equity Asia, the first specialized regional media and communication fund in Asia formed in partnership with global media firm CEA Group (USA), under the combined sponsorship of the ING Group and the Singapore Economic Development Board.
She is a Founding Partner of Crest Capital, the spin-off of the ING-Barings private equity business and helps initiated several private equity fund mandates across Asia, including The Enterprise Fund and the Value Monetization Fund.
When the world’s largest non-profit IP commercialization organization Battelle Memorial Institute started its Asia Pacific operations (360ip), Caroline was tasked to head the investment operations as Managing Director, working alongside a team of scientists to help commercialize and invest in IP technologies in Asia and build strategic partnerships with scientific research labs in China, Korea and Japan.
A keen advocate and promoter of the Asia PE/VC industry, she has participated as a speaker and guest lecturer at major seminars/summits and universities, including the Institute of Asia Private Equity Investment Seminars, the Korean Cable Television Summit, Cable & Satellite Broadcasting Association of Asia (CASBAA) Summit, National University of Singapore, Nanyang University Business School, Beijing University’s EMBA program and the CFA Institute.
Caroline graduated with a Bachelor of Accountancy (Hons) Degree from the National University of Singapore as a KPMG scholar; she is also a Certified Public Accountant and a CFA Charter holder and completed the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School. She is Singaporean, fluent in English, Mandarin, and conversant in major Chinese dialects.