Lombard Odier is to reorganise the administration of its own funds in Jersey by transferring its domestic fund business to legal and financial services firm Bedell Group. Most of Lombard Odier’s existing fund administration staff are expected to continue working on the funds on behalf of Bedell.
Bedell Fund Services has been appointed by Lombard Odier to service its Jersey funds from later this year, while Luxembourg-domiciled funds currently serviced in Jersey will be administered by a new office that the Swiss-based group plans to open in the grand duchy..
The business being outsourced to Bedell includes management services and administration of both traditional and alternative funds. “Lombard Odier fund management has been in Jersey for 25 years,” says a spokesman. “All that’s happening is that we are going back to the situation before 2001, when funds were administered by an outsourced provider.”
Lombard Odier took over administration of its funds in Jersey nine years ago when the growing volume of activity justified the establishment of an in-house business unit.
Details of the agreement with Bedell are still being finalised, but the spokesman says: “Lombard Odier Jersey will very much continue. The reorganisation will have no effect on our Jersey funds, which will continue to be administered by the same people.”
According to the firm, the “vast majority” of the six staff currently active in fund administration in Jersey will move with the business to Bedell.
Lombard Odier currently administers publicly distributed and specialist dedicated funds in Jersey while investment management is delegated to other parts of the Geneva-based group. It launched its first umbrella fund investing in bonds, one of the first of its kind in Europe, in Jersey more than 20 years ago.
