Chairman, Fortress Holdings Group
Bill Yuan is the Chairman of Fortress Holdings Group, an Asia-based mixedstaged venture capital and investment holdings company, and Chairman of Auga Group, as well as its subsidiary, Guangzhou Kingstar Culture Media Investment Co., Ltd..
Mr. Yuan began his finance career at Goldman Sachs as an investment banker in Mergers & Acquisitions, after attending Cornell University and Harvard University’s JFK School of Economics and Government as a Mason Fellow. He then served as a senior-vice president and co-manager at Morgan Stanley Smith Barney’s Portfolio Management Corporation with dual functions as co-head of the Capital Markets Derivative team, and Chairman of the Technology Investment Management and
Executive Policy Committee. Mr. Yuan then became founder and managing director of the Corporate Institutional Services Group at Merrill Lynch Asset Management. He was the President and Head of Merrill Lynch Asset Management Asia, and Chairman of Merrill Lynch Global Asset Allocation Committee, which had $488 billion under management. Simultaneously, Mr. Yuan was the Chief Investment Officer/ Portfolio Manager of the $1.2 Billion AmerAsia Hedge Fund domiciled in Asia with special emphasis on technology, media / entertainment, and telecom (TMT).
After attaining over 20 years of experience on Wall Street in all aspects of finance including sell side, capital markets, buy side, venture/private equity, and buy-outs, Mr. Yuan has amassed excellent relations with institutional, venture capital, global private equity, and hedge funds. His current focus is on Media / Entertainment / Sports (MES).
On the sports side, he packages, structures, and funds the investment into MLB / NBA / NFL sports teams. On the media / entertainment front, Mr. Yuan is heading up Affinity, the first of three local Chinese currency film/TV funds in China. Simultaneously, he is also setting up Alchemy Media Fund in the US, which is a parallel fund to Affinity. The second of his China funds will specialize in global co-production, and the third will be a large Chinese infrastructure fund. On both paternal and maternal sides, Mr. Yuan’s family ran CITIC, China International Trust Investment Corp, the grandfather sovereign wealth fund of China, and China Merchants. He has strong relationships with the Chinese government and has been elected Chairman of China Media Corp (CMC), a Chinese think tank made up of local and international experts in entertainment and media.
On the film/TV content side, Mr. Yuan owns a film production company and has developed a slate of motion pictures, including ownership of all media rights in perpetuity to existing internationally-branded properties. He has excellent existing relationships with China’s Ministry of Propaganda (MOP), Ministry of Culture (MOC), and State Administration of Radio, Film, & Television (SARFT). He has advised the Korean Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism (MOCST), and various Korean government agencies with global fund initiatives for both feature film and live events.
Mr. Yuan has co-ventured with China Film Group, and has strong associations with Shanghai Media & Entertainment Group and Huaxia, the top three content distributors in China that control over 85% of the Chinese film distribution market. Mr. Yuan also has relationships with the top tier investment, private equity firms, and hedge funds in Asia.