Ascentium, an Asia-based enterprise companies platform backed by Hillhouse Funding, is buying Dezan Shira & Associates, a 33-year-old advisory agency finest recognized for its Asia Briefing intelligence platform. The deal is Ascentium’s most up-to-date in additional than a dozen acquisitions, plugging a spot within the firm’s mainland China protection whereas deepening its footprint in sizzling Southeast Asian progress markets.
“We did not have a meaningful capability to service multinational corporations that wanted to go into mainland China,” Lennard Yong, Ascentium’s co-founder and CEO, tells Fortune. The acquisition provides new places of work in mainland Chinese language cities like Guangzhou and Tianjin, and pairs Ascentium’s outbound experience with Dezan Shira’s inbound information.
Chinese language outward funding reached $174 billion final 12 months, a 7% improve. A 2025 report from McKinsey notes that China is now a web investor abroad, partly as a result of decreased inward flows from the U.S. and Europe, but in addition as a result of Chinese language companies are racing to diversify provide chains and chase customers in rising markets. “Ascentium has the capability to bring Chinese companies out globally,” Yong explains.
China’s exports to ASEAN jumped 13.4% final 12 months; exports to Vietnam alone surged greater than 22%. Exports to the U.S., in contrast, plunged 20%, as a result of U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff regime.
Alberto Vettoretti, a managing associate at Dezan Shira who joined the agency within the late Nineties, has observed the shift in the place his prospects are coming from. 5 years in the past, most of his prospects had been American or European. “Now, one-third of our customers in Vietnam are Chinese,” he says. “The switch in nationalities has been quite large.”
Vietnam particularly is benefiting from higher inward funding from China and different economies. The Southeast Asian nation grew by 8.0% final 12 months, with manufacturing increasing by virtually 10%; the nation’s inventory market is ready for a FTSE improve to rising market standing later this 12 months. The Dezan Shira deal will double Ascentium’s capability within the nation.
“When you talk to people in Vietnam, they’re all very hungry,” Vettoretti says. “You see a lot of young entrepreneurs coming up through the ranks.”
The roll-up logic
Yong, a chartered accountant who beforehand spent 5 years as group CEO of Tricor, based Ascentium in 2024 along with his cofounder Wendy Wang. The platform now offers finance and accounting, payroll, HR, and cross-border companies (amongst others) throughout 46 cities in 27 markets, in a footprint stitched collectively from a number of acquisitions throughout the area, together with InCorp International and Hyperlinks Worldwide. (Ascentium is a transparent instance of a roll-up technique, common amongst non-public fairness, the place an organization will purchase different companies to quickly construct functionality and scale.)
Dezan Shira & Associates, based in Hong Kong in 1992, spans 27 places of work throughout the area. “We coveted the business they built with sweat and tears over three decades, and they’ve mastered the art of knowing how to set up businesses onshore in China.”
Yong notes that, finally, the Dezan Shira model will likely be folded into Ascentium, although he says the migration will likely be “controlled.”
“We are not in the fast-moving consumer goods space,” Yong says. “It makes more sense for our clients to have a singular brand.”
Broadly, Yong hopes that Ascentium, as an Asia-focused firm, will likely be properly positioned to seize Asian progress. “The world has evolved from a unipolar world to a multipolar world,” he says. “There 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.”
“We choose to be anchored in Asia because we want our CEOs to be very close to the Fortune 500 firms of tomorrow,” Yong provides.
