Taurus Administration Services has acquired Pacific Fund Systems’ PFS-PAXUS integrated share registry/fund accounting platform to support a push into the European market, which it expects to grow as a result of the Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive.
Taurus will target start-up and sub-USD100 million funds often regarded as being too small by the larger fund administrators. Taurus has been appointed administrator to three alternative investment funds and has seen its assets under administration grow over the last two years from USD80 million to USD192 million in 11 funds. It has offices in Madrid, Geneva and the Cayman Islands and is looking to open a new office in Europe in 2016.
Nicholas Calleja (pictured), Chief Financial Officer, MPG, says: “The UCITS regulations require funds to invest in funds that are highly liquid, which means mainstream assets such as equities, bonds and foreign currency only. But that does not help investment professionals who want to construct diversified portfolios that include less liquid alternative assets.
“Thanks to the AIFMD the alternatives market in Europe is now potentially huge – the fund industry is gearing up to deal with demand for alternatives pursuant to the directive. However, most of the fund administrators in the market are so large they have no interest in start-ups or funds with less than USD100m. A lot of boutique managers that struggle to find administrators still want to grow in size and Taurus is extremely well placed to provide the services they need.
“The selection of PFS-PAXUS has been mainly due to the integrated nature of the system where the share registry is fully integrated with the system’s general ledger. We are focused on growing our business and in deploying PFS-PAXUS we are confident that this strategic decision will assist us in doing so.”
Taurus, a subsidiary of the Managing Partners Group (MPG), currently administers a diverse portfolio of investment funds and entities including hedge funds, mutual funds, UCITs, property funds, feeder funds, multi-share class funds, and funds with various segregated portfolios that follow various investment strategies.
