Custom House Administration & Corporate Services Limited has doubled hedge fund assets under administration to over USD 10bn.

Dermot S.L. Butler, Chairman of Dublin-based Custom House, the specialist hedge fund administration firm, said: "We have achieved this significant level of growth in just ten months - we reported USD 5 billion in assets under administration on 31 December 2003."

Assets under administration have grown via a mixture of new hedge funds, existing hedge funds performing well, and new money flowing into existing hedge funds.

Butler said: "In addition we have been selected by a number of hedge fund managers who have decided to change the administrator of their funds. Undoubtedly our PFS PAXUS administration system and the implementation of our CHARIOT secure web reporting platform has proved very popular with managers and investors and increased our efficiency substantially."

He noted: "The hedge funds we administer in Dublin are offshore products and it is clear that European investor interest in these hedge fund products has significantly increased over the past few months."

Butler added: "It would appear that investors are increasingly taking the view they need to have products not correlated with the stockmarket in their portfolio and are clearly making allocations to support this view."