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This year’s winner of Hedgeweek’s Best US Audit Firm award for the second year running, CohnReznick, provider of integrated audit, tax and advisory services, keeps a keen eye on recent market trends to meet the needs of its alternative fund management clients.
Gary Berger, Partner and Northeast Practice Leader of CohnReznick’s Financial Services industry practice, says: “Successful alternative investment fund managers understand the market conditions and economic factors impacting their ability to raise capital, invest wisely and operate efficiently.”
CohnReznick is seeing more strategies around cryptocurrency or digital assets, but remains cautious on working with these due to regulatory concerns,
BTIG, this year’s winner of Best Prime Broker – Start-Up & Emerging Managers, onboarded and supported a record number of new clients this year, many of whom launched funds in the last few months, made valuable introductions through the BTIG Capital Introduction team and saw a strong uptick in clients utilising BTIG’s Outsource Trading team to execute trades on their behalf.
This year’s winner of Best Tax Advisory, Anchin, prides itself on focusing on the needs of its clients. Jeffrey Rosenthal, Leader of Anchin’s Financial Services Practice, says: “Tax is very important to many of our clients, but tax planning can be traumatic because of changes in the law. We’re very proactive when it comes to reaching out to our clients, and we educate them to recognise issues that might be important for them.”
Over the last year, Anchin has seen that with volatility comes opportunity and that managers have been able to take advantage of these swings in the market.
It has been almost a decade since regulators asserted jurisdiction over networks, and yet cyber risk continues to plague the alternative investment management (AIM) space. Services offered by those such as 2021’s Best Cybersecurity Provider, therefore, remain imperative.
Innovation
John Araneo, Managing Director, Cybersecurity & General Counsel, believes that Align was chosen for this award for one reason: innovation. He says: “The Align Cybersecurity team really pioneered the concept of providing model cybersecurity programmes that are appropriately scaled for investment advisers. Align was the first firm to intentionally design a full-on cybersecurity advisory team as part of a managed IT service provider.”
US-based accountancy firm Akram|Assurance, Advisory & Tax Firm, which provides fund accounting for niche clients, has navigated the challenges of the last 18 months by accelerating the implementation of multiple technological platforms.
RFA has navigated the undoubted challenges of the last 12-18 months by helping clients to maintain work and deal flow.
“We have continued to work with clients to maintain and evolve our fully mobile working solutions – with clients’ mobility at the forefront alongside security, which requires a cloud-based network modelling, decentralised cyber security, behavioural analysis and, of course, centralised data, in all senses of the word, through to cloud-based automation and warehousing,” says George Ralph, Global Managing Director and CRO.
RFA works to bring a firm’s data together using data management tools, effectively harnessing all its vital information into
Jefferies has found the last 18 months an invigorating and uncharted period in the industry, both for itself and its clients.
“For us, the last year and a half have been more about heightened levels of focus, awareness and discipline. We have a great team working hard to ensure we navigate challenges, with strong leadership at the senior level. The years 2020 and 2021, while challenging and eventful, for us reaffirmed the controls are there and working, and it’s more about being alert and on the front foot,” says John Laub, Global Head of Prime Services.
Jefferies’ clients have also
Like many other firms, Alliant was very concerned with how the global shutdown was going to affect its clients, firm and people at the onset of the pandemic: its insurance advisory and brokerage business is collaborative and relies heavily on a high level of people interaction between clients, underwriters and colleagues.
Tourmaline Partners, an outsourced trading solutions firm, has made multiple key new hires. Brett Fischer has joined as Managing Director, supporting business development and strengthening relationships with existing clients.
In addition, Michael Maloney has joined as a Director on the firm’s US operations team, and Lavan Guruparan has joined as an Associate Director on Tourmaline’s Asia-Pacific (APAC) operations team.
With 25 years of institutional experience and deep relationships on both the buy and sell side, Fischer most recently spearheaded JP Morgan’s Americas electronic equity sales team. There, he led the business from outside the top ten to a top three
Given the cloud-based nature of its operating model, Arcesium had the advantage of being well-positioned for a quick, seamless transition to a fully remote, global operation when the pandemic began.
Dmitry Miller, SVP, Head of Technical Relationship Management at Arcesium, comments: “We were able to continue serving our existing clients and add new clients, without skipping a beat thanks to our cloud-native architecture and the hard work of our staff.”
Due to the pandemic, Arcesium’s clients experienced a series of events, including increased trading volumes, market volatility, forced transition to remote work, and other major impacts affecting their business.
