Academic plucked from Cambridge University English literature course takes centre stage at recent fund manager awards ceremony

THERE'S A THEORY that states a butterfly flapping its wings can stir up a hurricane on the opposite side of the globe.

It takes a similar stretch of the imagination to work out how Xue Jun Sun, an academic from Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, came to be carrying off a stack of South China Morning Post fund manager awards on behalf of Newton Investment Management.

Ten years ago, Mr Sun graduated with a masters degree in English literature in the mainland backwater of Nankai in Tianjin.

That earned him a scholarship to the hallowed halls of Cambridge University in England, where he chose a new first name, Ezra, to help his professors troubled by the pronunciation of Xue Jun.

Mr Sun buried himself in analysing the English novels of authors from around the world and by 1994 he was nearly finishing his doctorate in Cambridge's 'cosy, a little bit depressing environment'.

At the same time, on the opposite side of the globe, Morgan Stanley's influential strategist Barton Biggs was supping noodles in the mainland and declaring himself 'maximum bullish' on the country.

That triggered a rally in Chinese stocks which caught the eye of veteran Newton fund manager David Patterson. He became convinced that the manager of Newton's China fund should be a mainlander. But where to find one? The answer was to come staring back at Cambridge graduate Mr Patterson in a university alumni magazine article on Mr Sun.