Northern Trust has been selected by New York-based fund manager Auda Hedge to provide fund administration, custody, banking and foreign exchange services to its fund of hedge funds program
Northern Trust has been selected by New York-based fund manager Auda Hedge to provide fund administration, custody, banking and foreign exchange services to its fund of hedge funds programme, which has assets exceeding USD1bn.
‘Northern Trust is able to offer us everything we need under one roof and, in addition, we are particularly excited about the prospect of having daily portfolio management data for our funds of hedge funds for the first time,’ says Auda chief operating officer Robert Kirby. ‘Both were important reasons that lead to Northern Trust’s selection.
‘Northern Trust demonstrated that through their consistent client service approach around the world, coupled with their superior single, global technology platform, they are able to meet our needs now and continue to support us through our plans for future growth.’
Sue Baines, Northern Trust’s head of global fund services sales for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, says: ‘Auda’s business model and service requirements fit well with Northern Trust’s expertise in servicing funds of hedge funds. We continue to be at the forefront of the industry in improving data timeliness and automation for this fast-growing asset class.’
In January, Northern unveiled announced a worldwide partnership to provide enhanced data to fund of hedge funds manager’s via youDevise’s Hedge Information Provider system, an online portfolio management system developed specifically for funds of hedge funds.
According to Northern Trust, the system considerably improves the timeliness of information received by managers from underlying hedge funds regarding their holdings, current value, performance, liquidity and hedging, as well as a detailed breakdown of assets and transactions. It aims to enable fund of hedge funds managers to see portfolio management data daily that historically was available only monthly.
Northern Trust became the first global asset service provider to adopt the system and is currently working with youDevise on a programme to integrate it into the bank’s global technology platform by this summer.
‘Funds of hedge funds have become the route chosen by many institutional investors when accessing hedge funds,’ says Wilson Leech, head of Northern Trust’s global fund services group. ‘By fully integrating Hedge Information Provider onto Northern Trust’s global platform we will be able to deliver an enhanced reporting capability and reduce operational risk, enabling our clients to make decisions faster and more effectively.
‘This supports Northern Trust’s drive to offer comprehensive asset servicing capabilities to the global fund of hedge funds industry and is a key part of our strategy to bring innovative and effective solutions to meet the dynamic and increasingly complex requirements of asset managers around the world.’
Chicago-based Northern Trust provides investment management, asset and fund administration, fiduciary and banking solutions to corporations, institutions and affluent individuals through 85 offices in 18 US states and 15 international offices in North America, Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, with assets under custody of USD4trn and assets under investment management of USD778.6bn at the end of March.
Auda International was established in 1989 to advise the family of German entrepreneur and industrialist Harald Quandt, whose members are among the owners of auto manufacturer BMW, on their private equity, hedge funds and real estate investments in US. Today the group’s affiliates Auda Private Equity and Auda Hedge are independent alternative investment advisors managing more than USD5.5bn in committed capital.
