Tideway Investment Partners LLP (Tideway) has become the latest high-profile investment manager to add its funds to ISEFundHub (https://isefundhub.com). Since its launch by the Irish Stock Exchange (ISE) in November 2014, approximately 50 investment fund managers have joined ISEFundHub to display information on their funds, ranging from net asset value (NAV) to performance analytics and peer comparisons.
“Managers can host key fund documents such as factsheets, KIIDS, annual reports, and display their fund NAV history for each share class. ISEFundHub can be used by funds that are listed on ISE, as well as non-listed Irish-domiciled funds,” comments Rose Ward, Vice President, International Primary Markets at the ISE.
“We are very pleased that we’ve attracted some very good brand names to the platform with the likes of Man AHL, Odey Asset Management, Fidelity, Neuberger Berman and JO Hambro to name but a few other leading investment managers who have come on board since launch,” adds Ward.
Peter Doherty (pictured), Managing Partner and Chief Investment Officer (CIO) at Tideway, explains that after careful deliberation, the decision was taken to redomicile the Tideway Real Return Fund from Luxembourg to Ireland and list it on the ISE using the innovative Irish Collective Asset-management Vehicle (ICAV) legal structure. Introduced in 2014, the ICAV has been highly successful at increasing the range of fund vehicles available to fund promoters.
“We started that process in early 2015 and we finalised the move in April 2016,” states Doherty, confirming that Tideway has since added two sub-funds to Tideway UCITS Funds ICAV (Ireland): Tideway GBP Hybrid Capital Fund, a long-only fund launched at the beginning of September this year, and Tideway GBP Credit Fund, a short duration credit fund.
“We believed that having those funds domiciled in Ireland and listed on the ISE, with the ability to send out pricing and NAV data to European investors via the ISEFundHub website, would be useful. We have engagements with a number of platforms across Europe and we can now easily share pricing details and NAVs. We see ISEFundHub as providing additional infrastructure and distribution; instead of Tideway being the gateway for distribution, ISEFundHub does this work for us,” adds Doherty.
The ISE is the world-leading exchange for listing funds and has 7,000 funds representing every major funds domicile around the world listed on its market. The creation of ISEFundHub was a natural progression for the ISE – a stock exchange listing increases the visibility of the fund to a wider range of institutional investors, many of whom are restricted from investing in non-listed securities – ISEFundHub was the perfect add-on to the ISE’s services and the first time a single, central repository of Irish fund data was created for professional investors.
Considering that Ireland is the second largest fund domicile in Europe, ISEFundHub is very much filling a gap in a key piece of infrastructure for the Irish funds industry.
“Prior to ISEFundHub there was no centralised place to find data on Irish funds. We felt that we were uniquely positioned to provide such a solution, given the wide number of relationships we have with fund managers. We chose to do this in partnership with FundConnect because they were operating in this space already with a similar product in the Nordic region providing data on Nordic funds. We are delighted with the partnership which has worked extremely well to date,” says Ward.
Doherty says that the ICAV structure is particularly appealing because it offers the flexibility to create different sub-funds that appeal to different investors around the world; in particular those in the US and Canada. “The tax and income treatment in Ireland is very favourable and the idea that we can take in US money for example, is attractive for us. We already have some new investors and we might set up a US-focused target absolute return fund.”
As well as the ease of operation and high-grade service providers available in Ireland, Doherty says that having Tideway’s funds visible to a wider audience on ISEFundHub platform is a clear benefit.
“The Tideway Real Return Fund is registered in Germany and we are looking to do some additional European distribution. Once the Tideway Real Return Fund was listed on the ISE it was a natural extension for us to add it to ISEFundHub. Having a platform as a partner to plug in to other fund platforms is an advantage. We found the process of onboarding the fund to ISEFundHub very straightforward, its easy to use and the ISE is very supportive if you have any questions.
“The infrastructure and support for fund managers in Ireland is second to none,” says Doherty.
Next year, Tideway expects to launch two equity funds – one global equity, the other global growth – in addition to a mixed-asset, value recovery fund.
“The feedback we’ve had from investors is that the website is very easy to navigate and find the relevant fund data. The feedback we get from fund managers is that it is a very cost-effective solution and very easy to onboard their data onto the site. We see ISEFundHub as a low-cost, low-maintenance solution for managers to display data on their funds,” explains Ward.
Doherty is in no doubt that having access to a platform like ISEFundHub is a useful resource.
“When you are a small- to mid-sized manager like Tideway, anything that avoids duplication and has an institutional feel to it around data and data management is very helpful. We keep the NAV live on our own website and our fund factsheets are updated every month, but having a central location for investors to visit has clear advantages,” concludes Doherty.
