Solutions
By Keith Parker, Link Asset Services – The Irish funds industry had another bumper year with total assets for 2017 growing by EUR298 billion – a 16 per cent year-on-year increase – to a record high of EUR2.4 trillion1, a substantial figure and testament to the attractiveness of Ireland as a global funds domicile. Of this total just over 76 per cent represents UCITS funds’ assets, the balance representing alternative assets. More than 900 fund managers from 50-plus countries have assets serviced in Ireland.2
There are many service providers that form part of the Irish funds industry; these include custodians,
Although most institutional investors are comfortable with the idea of fund managers outsourcing middle- and back-office functions while they focus on managing the investment strategy, they are taking great care and attention at the pre-allocation stage, as part of the ODD process.
Whilst they understand that there are numerous cost benefits and efficiencies to be gained using hosted platforms, they want complete confidence in who the platform provider is.
John Hynes (pictured) is CEO of HedgeFacts, a leading provider of middle- and back-office solutions to alternative fund managers. He notes that the cloud has become a significant game changer for managers
Interest in Ireland among private debt and private equity fund managers remains strong, especially with the highly anticipated amended Irish Investment Limited Partnership (ILP), scheduled to be formally approved later this year.
This is good news for Ireland’s asset servicers. U.S. Bancorp Fund Services, has continued to grow its market share in not only the familiar long/short equity, credit and managed futures segments but also private equity and private debt funds and reinsurance funds.
“Over the last 18 months our assets under administration have grown from USD117 billion to USD187 billion. A considerable portion of that growth has been in
The Dubai Gold & Commodities Exchange (DGCX), and its 100 per cent fully owned subsidiary the Dubai Commodities Clearing Corporation (DCCC), have upgraded their integrated trading and clearing solution from Cinnober to the latest version of the TRADExpress platform.
The purpose was to enhance and speed up business development capabilities even further, and to benefit from a more refined trade and market data protocol, leading to improved bandwidth usage. As the new version went live, DGCX launched the region’s first, and world’s only, exchange-traded Shari’ah Compliant Spot Gold contract (DGSG).
Having received recognition from ESMA and ADGM in 2017,
Quantitative Brokers (QB) is now offering its execution algorithms on Rebar’s flagship product, ROME – Rebar Order Management & Execution.
ROME, formally launched in April 2018, has integrated QB’s sophisticated fixed income and futures algorithms – Bolt, Strobe, and Closer – to offer hedge funds and asset managers streamlined trading workflows and a greater ability to achieve and measure best execution.
“We are delighted to partner with Quantitative Brokers and offer their algorithms on ROME,” says Adam Striffler, Head of Sales and Business Development at Rebar. “We strive to offer cutting edge technology solutions to our clients. The addition
The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC), has set a timetable for the first phase of settlement optimisation, a significant enhancement aimed at removing an entire market day of settlement exposure without eliminating a calendar day from the standard trade settlement process.
Based on support and feedback from the Settlement Optimisation Working Group, DTCC is taking a phased approach to the implementation of settlement optimisation, beginning with night cycle re-engineering.
By focusing initially on re-engineering the night cycle, a processing batch occurring in the overnight hours, DTCC seeks to significantly increase settlement rates going into the next morning. Today’s
Sloane Robinson, an International long/short equity manager with a focus on the Asian, Emerging and Frontier markets, has continued its deployment of the CommciseBUY research valuation platform.
The Commcise functionality used by Sloane Robinson includes research budgeting and valuation; broker voting and payments; internal reporting including fund-level research cost allocation. The implementation was undertaken by a joint Commcise and Sloane Robinson team, including integration with Sloane Robinson systems.
David Gale, CEO at Sloane Robinson, says: “Sloane Robinson chose Commcise after a careful selection process, which was focused on ensuring we would meet our internal standards on research transparency. As an asset
Proprietary trading firm WH Trading has selected QuantHouse’s QuantLINK and QuantFEED suite of solutions.
WH Trading, the Chicago-based firm, trading the futures and options market across the US, Europe and Asian markets, is using QuantLINK, QuantHouse’s ultra-low latency, fully redundant 40G network to enable market access and delivery of market data at low latency speeds.
The connectivity performance of the QuantLINK network is continually expanded upon to ensure the latest and fastest routes are available with new exchanges and alternative trading venues being constantly added to ensure that firms have access to the most extensive range of venues to
A majority of alternative fund administration firms – 74 per cent – expect consolidation in the alts fund admin space, according to the just-released eVestment Alternative Fund Administration 2018 survey.
This is up dramatically from the 47 per cent of survey respondents who expected consolidation in 2017’s survey.
And despite technology and new players disrupting numerous industries around the world, only 11 per cent of survey respondents expect to see new entrants into the fund administration business over the near term, down from 26 per cent of respondents in the prior year’s results.
Alternative asset managers are increasingly
Apex Token Fund, an investment manager specialising in cryptocurrency and blockchain related assets, has launched its public token sale for its fund of hedge funds.
Apex tokens provide retail investors with access to a diversified portfolio of cryptocurrency assets managed by a selection of top performing hedge funds. The sale runs until 25 May 2018 and aims to raise a soft cap of USD25 million and a hard cap of USD100 million.
Investors can buy tokens in the fund via Apex Token Fund’s website. The minimum investment in the fund is 5 ETH, the cryptocurrency currently worth around USD760.
