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Ascentium, an Asia-based business services platform backed by Hillhouse Investment, is acquiring Dezan Shira & Associates, a 33-year-old advisory firm best known for its Asia Briefing intelligence platform. The deal is Ascentium\u2019s most recent in more than a dozen acquisitions, plugging a gap in the company\u2019s mainland China coverage while deepening its footprint in hot Southeast Asian growth markets.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe did not have a meaningful capability to service multinational corporations that wanted to go into mainland China,\u201d Lennard Yong, Ascentium\u2019s co-founder and CEO, tells Fortune. The acquisition adds new offices in mainland Chinese cities like Guangzhou and Tianjin, and pairs Ascentium\u2019s outbound expertise with Dezan Shira\u2019s inbound knowledge.<\/p>\n
Chinese outward investment reached $174 billion last year, a 7% increase. A 2025 report from McKinsey notes that China is now a net investor overseas, partly due to decreased inward flows from the U.S. and Europe, but also because Chinese firms are racing to diversify supply chains and chase consumers in emerging markets.\u00a0\u201cAscentium has the capability to bring Chinese companies out globally,\u201d Yong explains.<\/p>\n
China\u2019s exports to ASEAN jumped 13.4% last year; exports to Vietnam alone surged more than 22%. Exports to the U.S., by contrast, plunged 20%, due to U.S. President Donald Trump\u2019s tariff regime.<\/p>\n
Alberto Vettoretti, a managing partner at Dezan Shira who joined the firm in the late 1990s, has noticed the shift in where his customers are coming from. Five years ago, most of his customers were American or European. \u201cNow, one-third of our customers in Vietnam are Chinese,\u201d he says. \u201cThe switch in nationalities has been quite large.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Vietnam in particular is benefiting from greater inward investment from China and other economies. The Southeast Asian country grew by 8.0% last year, with manufacturing expanding by almost 10%; the country\u2019s stock market is set for a FTSE upgrade to emerging market status later this year. The Dezan Shira deal will double Ascentium\u2019s capacity in the country.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you talk to people in Vietnam, they\u2019re all very hungry,\u201d Vettoretti says. \u201cYou see a lot of young entrepreneurs coming up through the ranks.\u201d<\/p>\n
The roll-up logic<\/p>\n
Yong, a chartered accountant who previously spent five years as group CEO of Tricor, founded Ascentium in 2024 with his cofounder Wendy Wang. The platform now provides finance and accounting, payroll, HR, and cross-border services (among others) across 46 cities in 27 markets, in a footprint stitched together from several acquisitions across the region, including InCorp Global and Links International. (Ascentium is a clear example of a roll-up strategy, popular among private equity, where a company will acquire other firms to rapidly build capability and scale.)<\/p>\n
Dezan Shira & Associates, founded in Hong Kong in 1992, spans 27 offices across the region. \u201cWe coveted the business they built with sweat and tears over three decades, and they\u2019ve mastered the art of knowing how to set up businesses onshore in China.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yong notes that, eventually, the Dezan Shira brand will be folded into Ascentium, though he says the migration will be \u201ccontrolled.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are not in the fast-moving consumer goods space,\u201d Yong says. \u201cIt makes more sense for our clients to have a singular brand.\u201d<\/p>\n
Broadly, Yong hopes that Ascentium, as an Asia-focused company, will be well placed to capture Asian growth. \u201cThe world has evolved from a unipolar world to a multipolar world,\u201d he says. \u201cThere are companies in Saudi Arabia, in the UAE, in Singapore, in Hong Kong, in Shanghai that are no longer reliant on North American and European trade flows.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe choose to be anchored in Asia because we want our CEOs to be very close to the Fortune 500 firms of tomorrow,\u201d Yong adds.<\/p>\n
#Hillhousebacked #Ascentium #buys #Dezan #Shira #hopes #tap #outbound #China #investment<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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