Andy Ho, managing director and CIO of VinaCapital Investment Management, has died aged 52.

The board of the £921m VinaCapital Vietnam Opportunity Fund (VOF ) where he was a fund manager for 17 years have confirmed he died unexpectedly at his home in Ho Chi Minh City this morning. 

Don Lam, CEO and founding partner, said: ‘Andy has been my trusted business partner since 2007, and he has been instrumental in the growth of the company and VinaCapital as a whole. More importantly, he has been a close friend who will be missed by me and everyone at VinaCapital. I am devastated by this loss. My deepest condolences are with his wife, family and loved ones.’

Huw Evans, chairman of VOF, said Ho was instrumental in founding VOF. His energy and enthusiasm made important contributions to the growth of the company whose mix of listed and unlisted stocks had provided a 322% return to shareholders in the past 10 years.

‘On behalf of the board I would like to add our condolences to Andy’s family and also to Don Lam and the VinaCapital team who have lost a friend and valued colleague,’ Evans said.

Video interview with Andy Ho recorded in 2022.

Brook Taylor, VinaCapital’s head of asset management, has taken temporary charge of the VOF team – which includes co-managers Khanh Vu and Dieu Phuong Nguyen Thi, who are deputy managing directors of VinaCapital.

Ho left Vietnam as a young child with his family in 1977, emigrating to Bridgeport, Connecticut before settling in Denver where he studied at the University of Colorado.

After graduating, he joined E&Y as an auditor before transferring to its Hong Kong office and moving to Ho Chi Minh City to establish the firm in Vietnam where his clients included Coca-Cola and BP.

In 1998 he returned to the US to take an MBA at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), before moving to Austin, Texas, to join Dell Ventures. He moved back to Vietnam in 2004 to work for Prudential before accepting the role of CIO at VinaCapital in 2007.

Colleagues said he was a keen skier and loved the outdoors. He is survived by his wife Tina and a son.