Hoang Nguyen has left the big leagues of Swiss investment banking to join a boutique investment bank specializing in his homeland, Vietnam. As CIO at Ho Chi Minh City–based Saigon Asset Management, Nguyen, 49, has come home, but it won’t be to rest. In September he left his job managing a portfolio worth Sf5 billion ($4.87 billion) at Zurich Financial Services Group in Zurich to join SAM, where he helps oversee a portfolio of $125 million focused on Vietnamese equity.

His plan? "Reorganize the investment process so that it is flexible enough to seize the opportunities and efficient enough to meet our high risk-management standards." Nguyen fled Vietnam after the Communist takeover in 1975, obtained a master’s degree in business administration from the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland and then joined Union Bank of Switzerland.