Keirn O’Connor

Managing Director

Keirn is Managing Director of AIM Capital Ltd., where he oversees day-to-day operations and is responsible for fund strategy, managing the investment team, sourcing deals, evaluating opportunities, executing investments, and post-investment support of portfolio companies. He is based in Ho Chi Minh City.

Keirn has more than a dozen years of experience in the private equity, venture capital and investment banking industries. Within Indochina he has evaluated hundreds of investment opportunities and sourced and closed more than 10 private equity transactions.

Before joining AIM Capital, Keirn was Managing Director of SEAF Blue Waters Growth Fund in Ho Chi Minh City from December 2007. SEAF BWGF is a US$25million fund that invests in small and medium-sized enterprises in Vietnam. Keirn was responsible for the general management of the fund, including set-up, hiring, investment sourcing, investment opportunity analysis, deal execution and supporting portfolio companies after SEAF’s investment.

Prior to his move to Vietnam, Keirn was based in Chengdu in Sichuan Province, China, for two years. He supported all aspects of the SEAF China fund’s activities, including investment analysis and valuation, and provided significant support for the fund’s portfolio companies through a number of projects. Additionally, Keirn was involved in SEAF’s investment and capital-raising activities in Pakistan, India, Kenya, Malaysia and Peru and throughout the Middle East. While based at SEAF’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., he was responsible for the valuation of SEAF’s global investment portfolio.

Previous to his joining SEAF, Keirn was with the New York-based venture capital firm High Peaks Venture Partners. At High Peaks, he investigated more than 50 investment opportunities in the technology start-up arena and participated in negotiating and structuring deals in which High Peaks invested. In addition, Keirn spent time with High Peaks’ affiliate in Boston, Village Ventures, where he helped oversee Village Ventures’ extensive investment portfolio of more than 60 venture companies.

Keirn also spent five years at Macquarie Capital Partners, a boutique investment banking firm that specializing in private equity transactions within the property sector. Keirn was first based in Chicago and was later sent to the London office. In London, Keirn executed deals throughout Europe and specialized in sophisticated, cross-border private equity funds where capital was raised from investors worldwide and investments were made in multiple countries. At MCP, Keirn participated in 11 closed transactions with a total value of more than US$4 billion. He also wrote a quarterly analysis that was distributed to more than 1,000 clients of the firm. MCP was an affiliate of Macquarie Bank.

Keirn holds a B.A. in Economics, cum laude, from Williams College in Massachusetts, the number-one rated liberal arts college in the United States. He received his secondary education at the prestigious Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts, USA.

Hao C. Nguyen

Investment Officer

Hao is AIM Capital’s investment officer, responsible for investment execution and business development.

Prior to AIM Capital, he was a Senior Investment Analyst at SEAF Blue Waters Growth Fund, a US$25 million fund that invests in small and medium-sized enterprises in Vietnam. During his two-and-a-half years at SEAF, based in Ho Chi Minh City, Hao was active in investment execution and business development, and supported management in other tasks. He worked with more than 100 companies at different stages in the investment process across several industries in Vietnam.

He also taught in the Department of International Relations at the College of Social Sciences and Humanities in HCMC.

He has three years’ experience as a consultant for international organizations, such as the US Consulate, Center for Diseases Control and Prevention (CDC) of the United States, and Family Health International (FHI). In this capacity, he provided consulting expertise for various training, research and monitoring and evaluation (M&E) projects.

Hao holds a B.A. in English Linguistics and Literature from the College of Social Sciences and Humanities in HCMC, Vietnam. He was selected as one of the five representatives from Vietnam to join the Great Mekong Sub-region 1st Youth Forum held in Thailand, Laos and Vietnam to promote the tourism corridor and multinational development among Mekong Delta countries.

Alex Collins

Investment Analyst

Alex is responsible for pre-investment evaluation and support of AIM Capital’s developing business opportunities. Working with the investment team, he is active in a broad range of company initiatives.

Since joining AIM Capital in 2010, he has had direct experience with many of our active portfolio accounts. Alex has an affinity for the culture of Southeast Asia. He has lived in Ho Chi Minh City since 2008, working in language instruction and traveling extensively throughout the region and becoming an expert on the local market and economy.

He is a graduate of Boston College, with a degree in Marketing and Finance from the Carroll School of Management.

Mark G. Gillin

Director

Mark is a Founder and Partner in AIM Capital Management Ltd, is on the Investment Committee of the fund, is active in all day-to-day operations of the fund, and is responsible for fund strategy, sourcing deals, evaluating opportunities and post-investment support of portfolio companies. Mark has been based in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, for more than 15 years.

Mark is also Founder, Chairman and Managing Director of America Indochina Management Ltd. (AIM, online at www.aimup.com), and has spent the last 15 years identifying and developing business opportunities in Vietnam and Cambodia.

Established in 1994, AIM has emerged as one of Indochina's leading sales and distribution companies. Mark spearheaded several of the company’s key strategic initiatives including launching a building-materials business in 1994; diversifying into industrial consumables in 1998; and reducing the company’s exposure to—and thus overcoming—the Asian Crisis of 1997.

He has a proven track-record of uncovering and capitalizing on growth sectors in Indochina. For example, under Mark’s direction, AIM entered the hotel-supply business in Siem Reap, Cambodia, in 1998; the town at the foot of the famed Angkor Wat temples is now one of the world’s fastest growing tourist destinations. In 2005, AIM merged with construction-materials firm Protech. That move has borne successive years of growth in excess of 100% for the company’s building products business.

Mark has successfully managed businesses at various stages of development in a number of different Asia-Pacific markets including Japan, Hong Kong and Guam. Prior to coming to Vietnam in 1993, Mark spent five years with Getz Bros. & Co. Inc., the oldest and largest non-commodities trading company in the United States, where he worked on marketing- and distribution-related issues with leading multinationals such as Nestlé, Mobile Chemical, Kimberly Clark, Abbott Labs, Colgate Palmolive, Heineken and others.

Mark graduated cum laude from Duke, a premier American research university in North Carolina, with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Policy Studies.

Wesley Lang

Partner

Wes has more than 20 years of experience in private-equity investing in medium-sized companies across a variety of industries. He currently manages WML Partners, LLC (www.wmlpartners.com), an investment and business-development company focused on three areas: investing  capital in middle-market companies and aiding their development; providing private-equity services to select institutional investors; and making private-equity investments in Indochina through AIM Capital Management Ltd.

Previously, he was a Managing Director of GSO Capital Partners, an investment firm that specialized in leveraged finance and, prior to that, was a partner in a middle-market private equity investment advisor to Moore Capital Management, LLC.

For most of his career, Wes was a partner with Weiss, Peck & Greer a nationally recognized investment management firm that managed $18 billion when sold in 1997. Having joined WPG in 1985, Wes became a Partner in the Private Equity Funds, a Partner of the firm, and served on the Executive Committee. During Wes’s tenure at WPG, the firm sponsored a number of private-equity funds that invested in more than 40 different companies.

Before joining WPG, Wes was a commercial banker at Manufacturers Hanover Trust Company, where he specialized in acquisition financing. Wes currently is on the Advisory Board of York Street Capital Partners; serves on Governor Chris Christie’s New Jersey Gaming, Sports and Entertainment Advisory Commission; and is on the board of a number of private companies.  He received a Bachelor of Science degree from Bucknell University.

David Zezza

Partner

David is a Founder and Partner of AIM Capital and is an active member of the fund’s Investment Committee. He is actively involved in formulating fund strategy and evaluating and structuring investments. 

David is also the founding partner of Pacific Advantage Capital, an Asia-focused investment-management company concentrating on special situations investments.  He has more than 25 years of experience in finance and has lived and worked for more than 20 years based in Asia and the UK.

Prior to co-founding AIM Capital, David was most recently a Senior Managing Director and member of the Executive Committee at Citadel Investment Group - one of the world's leading investment management firms - based in Chicago and London. During his tenure, he was responsible for investment strategies across the U.S., European, and Japanese fixed-income markets; foreign-exchange trading; securitized products and mortgage-backed securities trading; and emerging-markets investments.

Before working at Citadel, David had a distinguished career at Deutsche Bank, serving as a Managing Director, Global Head of Emerging Markets and a Member of the Management Committee. Based in London for several years, he was responsible for the firm’s fixed-income origination, sales, and trading businesses across Latin America, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia. While based in Hong Kong and Singapore, David was Head of Deutsche Bank’s Global Markets businesses, where he was responsible for the firm’s activities across capital markets, sales, and trading.

David was also a Director at Salomon Brothers in Hong Kong, Tokyo and New York.

He graduated magna cum laude from Duke University with degrees in Economics and Public Policy Studies.