BFA Global Investors is bringing Asia-Pacific investors into the world’s largest private market 

Australia’s sophisticated wealth investors are increasingly seeking out the world’s most significant growth companies via investments in US private markets. Jonathan Belz, award-winning Co-Founder and CEO of BFA Global Investors, says connecting with America empowers investors to align capital with transformative opportunities, with investments ranging from diversified fund managers to space exploration and quantum computing. 

For investors wanting to participate in the most consequential companies of our time, the US private market’s undeniable drawcard is that it offers higher returns than can be found in most publicly listed companies. 

Investment manager BFA Global Investors focuses solely on US private assets, helping clients in the Asia Pacific region find rewarding opportunities in world-changing fund managers, such as Menlo Ventures, and companies like PsiQuantum, SpaceX, OpenAI, Anthropic, Groq, and Databricks. 

It’s an increasingly popular strategy that recently saw the Australian-based company expand globally with the establishment of a regional office in Singapore in response to strong demand. Mr Belz says BFA unlocks access to institutional-grade opportunities in these transformative companies while redefining how family offices and institutions participate in private assets. 

Belz credits his years at Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse in New York, China, and Hong Kong for helping him develop a unique personal philosophy focused on elevating the quality of thinking around capital. Belz is also a fluent Mandarin speaker, having lived in Shanghai and dedicated time in his 20s to learn that language before returning to financial markets. He credits the experience of deeply understanding China beyond a superficial level, as well as his roles in big institutions, for helping him to recognise that wealthy individuals and family offices were often a low priority, receiving a poor experience in organisations that, as he puts it, ‘had big mouths to feed.’ 

“But humans are living, breathing organisms that have different needs and requirements at different stages,” says Belz. “Investing is about more than money – it’s about unlocking human potential.” 

Private investment redefined 

Belz was determined to redefine private investment upon returning to Australia in 2019, after working as an Investment Manager at the Victor Smorgon Group in Melbourne. 

“We started BFA Global Investors to help families and advisors in Australia and Asia participate in the biggest story of our time, not just watch it from the sidelines,” he says. 

He wanted to work transparently with clients, to educate them for the long haul. As Belz says, if you hire a gym trainer, you need to put in the work yourself to get fit adding if you don’t do this, you will likely lose your fitness, and as the famous Chinese saying goes, “wealth doesn’t pass through three generations.” 

Belz was recently named Executive of the Year – Funds Management 2025, at Momentum Media’s Australian Wealth Management Awards. 

“The award says we are on the right track and my team is doing things that get recognised – that’s really important to me. And the award was unexpected, so that’s always nice,” he says. 

Expansion in Asia 

Belz did, however, miss the awards ceremony, having recently relocated with his wife Jacqui and three young daughters to Singapore to head up BFA’s new Asia-Pacific headquarters, as the firm looks to capitalise on growing demand across the region for differentiated private market access. 

In the six and a half years since Belz cofounded the company with Gavin Ezekowitz (currently the firm’s CIO), BFA Global Investors has significantly expanded its geographic footprint. Today, in addition to its new Asia-Pacific headquarters, BFA has investment professionals in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Los Angeles and Philadelphia whose teams leverage more than 50 years of combined institutional knowledge and strategic partnerships with industry leaders.  

BFA is now a trusted partner to more than 500 high-net-worth individuals, with a proven track record across both funds and co-investments. Recent significant exits for investors include a co-investment in Anthropic that was bought when the firm had a market cap valuation of US$17 billion and exited at a market cap valuation of US$183 billion, and a recent 2022 deep tech fund investment that this week paid back the entire fund commitment on the back of one investment. The firm typically aims to invest between US$10 million and US$50 million per investment. 

Rather than outsourcing, BFA – led by CIO Ezekowitz’  extensive personal and business relationships – has built direct relationships with leading US investment managers, creating relationship-driven access to high-demand private assets. Where other institutions in this space may push a particular product or have conflicting incentives, BFA’s alignment is not product-related, and market intelligence is based on relationships with leading institutional allocators, not trends. 

“What really determines success for families and family offices is the ability to get close to the underlying asset, to take away the conflicts that exist in obtaining that access and then replicating the process over and over again,” Belz says. 

The firm focuses on providing services to ultra-high-net-worth individuals and family offices in Australia and Asia, often through financial advisors. 

“Advisors are our big clients,” Belz says. “We’re really valuable to them. We make them smarter, help them to see the different pathways they can access, and open their eyes to different people, markets and strategies. We’re both B2B and B2C in our approach.” 

Recognising each private client’s individual needs is crucial for successfully matching institutional investments and returns. For example, Belz says a venture capital client may be AI or data-driven, or clients may prefer hedge funds for a more conservative approach. Either way, BFA’s strategies are solution-driven. 

Laser focus on US opportunities

“The US is a hub of innovation, excellence, and spontaneity. Yes, it has its challenges, I’ll be the first to admit it, but find me a better, deeper and more proven market for investors, and I’ll happily consider it,” Belz says. 

The size and scale of the US private market can be daunting, with thousands of companies seeking investors, deals, fundraising or coming to market – in a very different regulatory environment to Australia’s. The CIO team at BFA distils this plethora of possibilities into actionable investments where the focus is on the top 10% of opportunities in the private asset market. 

“It’s very important that you go with a specialist, which is what we are,” Belz says. “In fact, it’s critical. If you get substandard or average returns, or you’re just following what the very big guys do and go into very large funds, you lose the alpha, and alpha is ultimately the benefit, and the additional return you get from being in private assets. If you don’t deal with specialists, you may end up in a world where it probably isn’t worthwhile to do private assets at all.” 

Relationships are key

The relationships that Belz has with transformative companies are deeply personal. “It’s a luxury and a singular pleasure that I get to spend time with people who are absolutely at the top of their game,” he says. “When you are present in greatness and when you are around these brilliant people and the companies they’re investing in, you ultimately are as close to being true to purpose as you can be.” 

“You get a beautiful flywheel effect of working around these people, and that’s where we start and end. How do we find the best people and build that flywheel? It sounds simple, but it’s quite hard. Most don’t solve for that – they solve for ‘how can I raise a billion dollars’.” 

For Belz, 2025 is a pivotal year for BFA Global Investors and his investors. 

“We’re just at the right time. Not only is this is a unique market positioned for ourperformance, but the Asia Pacific wealth space where we operate in is quite an attractive, exogenous pool of capital that probably didn’t have opportunities previously like it does now. And it helps that just when demand is coming up the curve, you’ve also got the supply being available to us. That’s certainly good timing and helps us meet the moment,” Belz says. 

Learn more at https://www.bfainvestors.global or contact the BFA Global Investors team to discuss opportunities available to wholesale investors at investments@bfainvestors.global