Latest News
The Maples Group, a service provider offering clients a comprehensive range of legal, fiduciary, fund, regulatory and compliance, and entity formation and management services, has appointed Edwin Parker as Director of Business Development for the fund services business in Europe.
Parker brings over two decades of experience working with alternative and institutional asset managers and asset owners across Europe, as well as extensive knowledge of front and back office services and systems. He was most recently a Managing Director for a global investment management and investment services provider, responsible for all business and relationship development in EMEA. Prior to that,
Channel Islands independent director services business Altair has appointed Matt Wood as a director in Guernsey.
Wood will take on a pivotal role in driving forward Altair’s growth strategy in the Channel Islands as it looks to support the governance and oversight needs of a rising number of businesses across Guernsey and Jersey.
With over 20 years of financial services experience, particularly in the fund administration sector, Guernsey-based Wood joins Altair from Sanne where he was a Private Equity Director and Guernsey Country Head. Prior to that, he was Managing Director of State Street’s Alternative Investment Solutions.
Wood originally trained
Independent fund and corporate services provider, the Aztec Group, has promoted Paul Conroy to Group Head of Real Assets and Private Debt.
In his new role, Conroy (pictured) will assume overall responsibility for the development, growth and delivery of the Group’s real assets and private debt service offerings. He succeeds Mark Wanless, who has been appointed Chief Operating Officer.
Leading a multi-jurisdictional team of over 160 real assets and private debt administration professionals, Conroy will oversee client relationship management, operations and business development across real estate, infrastructure, asset leasing and private debt.
In his previous role, Conroy was Head
Independent asset manager Carmignac is widening the availability of its strategies to UK investors with the launch of six locally domiciled funds.
This is a significant milestone for Carmignac’s UK offering and a natural step in the company’s European growth strategy.
These funds, with the exception of FP Carmignac European Leaders, have been available as Luxembourg-domiciled SICAVs. They will now all be structured as UK Open Ended Investment Companies (OEICs) sub-funds and will be available as such to UK investors:
• FP Carmignac European Leaders (Europe ex UK Equities)
• FP Carmignac Unconstrained Global Bond (Global Fixed Income)
Hedge funds extended their run of positive returns to four straight months in April, returning 1.21 per cent for the month, according to the Barclay Hedge Fund Index compiled by BarclayHedge.
By comparison, the S&P 500 Total Return Index rose 2.85 per cent in April. For the-year-to date through the end of April hedge funds returned 6.86 per cent while the S&P was up 19.32 per cent.
“Several factors buoyed investor sentiment in April, including US first quarter growth exceeding expectations and strong US consumer spending and March jobs reports,” says Sol Waksman (pictured), president of BarclayHedge. “Hopeful signs in
CME Group’s total open interest reached a record 138,185,824 contracts on 14 May 14, 2019. The previous record was 138,041,727 contracts set on 15 March, 2018.
Open interest (OI) represents the number of active positions that market participants are holding open without taking delivery or offsetting, a measure that typically increases during times of market uncertainty.
Since the end of 2018, overall CME Group OI has grown by 20 per cent, with five of CME Group’s six asset classes also seeing rising OI levels, including: interest rates, up 26 per cent; agricultural products, up 23 per cent; equity index products,
The Wilshire Liquid Alternative Index, which provides a representative baseline for how the broad liquid alternative investment category performs, returned 0.98 per cent in April, outperforming the 0.66 per cent monthly return of the HFRX Global Hedge Fund Index.
The Wilshire Liquid Alternative Index family is a joint offering between Wilshire Funds Management, the global investment management business unit of Wilshire Associates, and Wilshire Analytics, creator of the Wilshire 5000 Total Market Index.
“April marked a continuation of gains across risk assets, buoyed by economic growth, low volatility and a favourable credit environment,” says Jason Schwarz (pictured), President of
BEQUANT, cryptocurrency exchange and prime brokerage, has launched BEQUANT DIRECT, a new Advanced Connectivity Service offering a low-latency co-located trading environment for institutional and professional traders.
BEQUANT’s co-location service will offer ultra-fast transfer of data, allowing for faster execution speeds and more efficient trading. As the cryptocurrency market grows increasingly stable, traders are looking for the fastest trading possible in order to remain competitive in the market.
This service will address the needs of BEQUANT’s professional clients, targeting sub-millisecond tick-to-trade latency for co-located clients. Using FIX 4.4-based order routing and market data connections, traders can action up to 1,000
Capital markets software firm genesis has launched Creative Studio to accelerate the development and deployment of scalable and interoperable products and solutions over the web, without the need to write any code.
This innovative launch by genesis comes in response to the growing market demand to build and deploy web-based solutions across capital markets, including buy-side & sell-side, execution venues and clearing houses.
Creative Studio delivers web applications, within hours, instead of the usual weeks and months, vastly expediting time to market. It does this by producing single-page web applications as well as OpenFin applications from a single application codebase. Once
Grey, a global advertising and marketing organisations, has partnered with Meyler, a marketing/placement agency focused exclusively on the alternative investment sector.
“The alternative investment sector really is one of the few remaining industries that has not fully embraced marketing, which is remarkable when you consider the level of competition that exists. It’s a proven fact that powerful marketing can open doors and influence outcomes,” says Alex Morrison, President of Grey West.
“Fund managers have known for a long time that raising capital isn’t just about performance,” says Kyle Dunn, President & CEO of Meyler. “The industry has only recently looked
