Gray and the firm he founded 15 years ago specialize in lending to publicly traded corporations and high-net-worth individuals, like the officers and directors of such companies. The loans use publicly traded stock as collateral.

“The Pacific Rim is a good market for what we do on the wealth-management side,” he says. “They invest more into deals that would give them a yield or return than they do savings accounts.”

Three years ago, GFS established an office in Hong Kong. Even though China regained control of the city from Great Britain in 1999, communism hasn’t made much of an impact on what is now the epicenter of the Asian economic boom.

“Hong Kong is Capitalism Central,” Gray says. “Even Shanghai. Now, Beijing is a lag, but Hong Kong is just business.”

Along with Indonesia and Singapore, Hong Kong is a target market for Gray’s latest venture, the GFS Global Yield Fund, announced in January. The hedge fund will position GFS for major growth in its loan portfolio. The average loan size now is $10 million.

“We’re working on one right now for about $140 million,” Gray says. “The loans that were like $25 to $50 million from A-plus-rated companies, we couldn’t do. Last year we left $850 million worth of loans on the table.

“That’s why we created the fund, to bring in investment dollars that you use to write your loans. The fund will buy the loans we underwrite, and the yield will be passed on to the investors.”

GFS’s current yield “is somewhere around 10 to 12 percent,” he says.

In addition to demand, there’s a cultural factor that makes Asia an especially favorable market for lenders. “We’re working in an economy where they don’t believe in default,” Gray says.

“In the six years we’ve been in Hong Kong, we’ve had two loans default. And since we have the stock as collateral, all we have to do is push a button to liquidate it to get our principle balance back. And our average return on those defaults was 78 percent ROI because the stock had appreciated.”

That wasn’t just luck. GFS customers have to go through an extremely thorough examination before they get a loan.

“We came up with an algorithm for scoring the collateral,” Gray says. “It goes through a rigorous 35-point fundamental and technical analysis. It even scans for corporate events such as earning announcements for any warning signs. We look at long-term trends, short-term trends, does it have earnings, what’s its market cap, how much does it trade per day, everything of that nature.”

The result is a score from zero to 10. “We’ve never seen a 10,” he says. “The highest we’ve ever seen was an eight, and that was a $37 billion market cap company out of Taiwan.”

GFS is doing all of this, Gray says, “with a CEO from A&T and a CFO from Morehouse.”

Gray stays close to the university. He’s a member of the advisory board for the School of Business and Economics. He’s been a speaker in the school’s Closing Bell series, and he’s worked with Dr. Thaddeus McEwen and the entrepreneurship program.

“It’s my passion to make those kids in the finance program understand that there’s a better way of building wealth in finance than there is in such things as athletics,” he says. “Finance is a lot bigger and faster if you really know what you can do.”

And in finance, “what you can do” is almost limitless.

“The thing about finance is you can finance almost anything if you can just come up with a good structure. And derivative structure and finance is what I want all the students in the finance department and that trading room doing.”

Gray can give the students insight into both the technical aspects of finance and the practical aspects. With an office in Hong Kong, Gray makes the trip once per quarter.

“It’s not too bad, 15 to 18 hours from New York to Hong Kong,” he says. “Now, that second leg to Singapore, that’s what kills you. You don’t want to do it the same day.”

Perhaps an ambitious goal may help you get through those long flights. Building GFS’s capacity so there won’t be another $850 million left on the table is a goal that will keep Gray occupied, whether he’s on a plane, in Hong Kong or back on Wall Street.

“So if I’m not at homecoming, that explains it,” he says.

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