It gives me great pleasure to provide a foreword for this year’s Hedgeweek US Awards report, in which we showcase some of the industry’s award-winning service providers. This year, we took a detailed methodological approach to selecting our fund manager award winners, with help from BarclayHedge, who were very supportive each step of the way. What is unique about our awards programme, however, is that every winner is selected by Hedgeweek’s readership, and is, as such, a peer review. We think this helps give an additional layer of authenticity. And gives each award winner a legitimate right to share their achievement with clients; both current and prospective. 

Cowen Outsourced Trading: Best Outsourced Trading Solution – Experienced traders, well established and highly regarded buy-side order management and execution technologies overlaid with a totally transparent operating model is what drives the core of the service Cowen Prime Services provides its clients. 

Constellation Advisers: Best Regulatory Advisory & Compliance Firm – Hedge funds continue to face increasing demands by institutional investors. Delegating key, non-investment related functions to experienced outsourced partners, can see funds of all sizes optimise and streamline their operations.

DMS Governance: Best Offshore Regulatory & Compliance Firm – In today’s ever-changing regulatory environment, asset managers can expect existing and upcoming product ranges to be affected by new regulation. DMS Governance supports its clients through a governance, risk and compliance framework to prepare them for any upcoming changes.

Harneys: Best Offshore Law Firm – Laws in several financial jurisdictions, such as Luxembourg, BVI, Cayman Islands and Cyprus, are constantly changing. To ensure law firms uphold best practice at all times they require a combination of a strong team, robust communication, systems and practices. In addition, crucial investment in technology can help enhance a firm’s service offering further.

Eze Castle Integration: Best Cloud Services – Cloud technology and security risks continue to evolve and Eze Castle Integration is working incessantly to develop solutions to empower and protect their investment management clients in the face of this evolution. 

Investcorp: Best Seeding Platform – Amidst various economic and geopolitical uncertainties, Investcorp has made significant progress executing its growth and diversification strategy. In the last year, the global alternative asset manager entered new geographies, strengthened its presence in adjacent asset classes, expanded its institutional client base and launched new lines of businesses. This was executed while embracing a culture of best practices supported by a strong alignment of interests that includes sharing in the risks and rewards with the firm’s clients, a long hallmark of Investcorp’s success.

Imagine Software: Best Risk Management Software Firm – Imagine Software has a 26-year track record for transforming challenges into opportunities for growth and development. Over the past few years, Imagine re-architected its award-winning risk engine and introduced massive parallelisation across a server farm so that it can now handle extremely large, if not limitless, volumes of positions and trades in real time.

Anchin, Block & Anchin: Best Accounting Firm for Start-Up Funds – Start-up hedge funds should adopt best practices at the onset as this will help set them up for long-term success. Accounting firm Anchin, Block & Anchin focuses on supporting these nascent businesses and guides them through the process of setting themselves up for growth.

Viteos: Best Shadow Accounting Firm – The investment book of record (IBOR) a crucial component for a hedge fund manager, is facing a number of challenges as managers search for alpha. Shankar Iyer (pictured), chief solutions officer at Viteos, explains how innovation is helping hedge funds alleviate some of these pressures.

Opus Fund Services: Best Hedgefund Administrator for Start-Up and Emerging Funds – Championing growth and development both internally and externally, Opus is making big moves to close out 2019 and head into the coming year with vigour. 

EisnerAmper: Best Accounting Firm – EisnerAmper LLP is among one of the nation’s largest accounting firms, with a dedicated and well-established Financial Services Practice that provides audit, tax, and advisory services. Our Financial Services Practice, comprised of the Asset Management and Capital Markets Groups, is the largest industry group within EisnerAmper servicing more than 2,500 financial services clients.

SS&C Eze: Best Front to Back Technology Firm – Joining SS&C Technologies in October 2018 has helped Eze Software get closer to its goal of bringing together different parts of the financial ecosystem in efficient and effective ways. Being part of a larger entity has helped Eze extend its knowledge of project management best practices and apply them to help customers tailor and optimise their operations. 

SS&C Advent: Best Managed Account Platform Technology Firm – Alternative managed accounts have become increasingly popular with institutional investors over the past decade, and Geneva is among the first platforms that enabled fund managers and administrators to service this market at scale.

UMB Fund Services: Best Hedge Fund Administrator – A top priority for UMB Fund Services is the client experience. One of the essential building blocks is a considerable investment in technology which helps ensure UMB’s clients have at their disposal a wide range of tools to support their own product offering to investors.

Horseshoe: Best Offshore Hedge Fund Administrator – As the pace of change accelerates, operational excellence, customisation and innovation becomes critical. In view of this, Horseshoe is focused on growing its brand in the fund administration industry by launching services to help clients streamline their processes and improve their efficiency.

Agecroft Partners: Best Third Party Marketing Firm – In order to attract high quality hedge funds and help grow their assets, a hedge fund consulting and marketing firm needs to nurture its reputation for having strong investment knowledge, being ethical and highly selective in terms of the hedge funds it chooses to represent. Agecroft Partners is a consulting and third party marketing firm whose objective is to be viewed in the marketplace as a thought leader within the hedge fund industry; a firm of high institutional quality and representing some of the top hedge funds in the industry.

Peaks Strategies: Best Public Relations Firm - Technology is playing a greater role in all aspects of the asset management value chain and communications agency Peaks Strategies is focused on introducing new, analytical technologies to help clients better understand the impact and the effectiveness of PR. 

Align: Best Cyber-Security Services Provider – In the fast-paced world of technology, efficiency and speed are highly valued. Align, a technology infrastructure solutions & managed IT services firm, prides itself on offering clients the innovation that occurs in the public cloud at a faster rate than any of its competitors. This, in turn, allows its clients access to the full benefits of these developments.