Articles and Features

TwentyFour Asset Management has selected Northern Trust to provide custody, fund accounting, financial reporting, compliance and company secretarial services to a new asset-backed securities fund domiciled in Guernsey. »

Sterling Trust, a custodian of alternative assets, has completed a name change to Equity Institutional, a Division of Equity Trust Company. »

A white paper produced by the Hedge Fund Operational Peer Group, a group of hedge fund CFOs and COOs and service providers, provides a blueprint for managers to think about when working with service providers. »

Varden Pacific, the San Francisco-based structured credit hedge fund manager launched in late 2010, has selected alternative assets placement agent MCAM Group to raise capital internationally for its flagship Varden Pacific Opportunity Partners fund. »

Even though the exact timeline for EMIR (European Market Infrastructure Regulation) has yet to be finalized, CME Clearing Europe is not resting on its laurels. Towards the end of March this year, it announced the launch of interest rate swap clearing; the firm’s first foray in clearing OTC financial derivatives in Europe. In doing so, CME Clearing Europe (which launched in May 2011) became the third main player to support European buy-side firms, along with Eurex and LCH.Clearnet. »

Outsourcing FATCA reporting function overcomes scalability issue for managers. “The reason firms should start early with FATCA is that until you have gone through the process of data mining and figuring out all the details on your investors, you really do not know the depth of the work that is required in order to be compliant,” asserts Michael Megaw (pictured), managing director at SS&C GlobeOp, one of the industry’s leading independent fund administrators. »

Conning, a provider of asset management services for the insurance industry, and Ramius Alternative Solutions LLC (RASL), which develops and manages customised alternative investment portfolios, have entered into a strategic alliance. »

Can Britain, like the US, successfully use the fracking technique to build energy reserves and cut costs? If so, what can be learned from the US? Eric Gordon, Energy Analyst at Brown Advisory, comments… »

 BNP Paribas Securities Services has launched its global Dealing Services solution in the UK – a new concept providing institutional investors access to a network of dealing teams using sophisticated dealing technology and covering all asset classes. »

Prospects are clouded for Cyprus as a domicile for investment and transaction structures set up by entrepreneurs and investors from Russia and other eastern European countries such as Ukraine following a levy on bank deposits and capital controls imposed by the government as part of a package of measures to stabilise the country’s banking sector, says Olivier Sciales, founding partner, Chevalier & Sciales… »