NEWS ROUND-UP |
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Apex Group has made its fourth purchase this year with the acquisition of Custom House, a global hedge fund administrator with $ 24 billion in AuA. The addition of Custom House bolsters Apex’ s existing hedge fund services division, giving it an added presence across Europe and Asia.
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Northern Trust has been selected by ExodusPoint Capital Management as a fund administrator for its $ 8 billion of assets across equity and fixed income strategies. The hedge fund launched by Michael Gelband, a former fixed income trader at Millennium Management, was described as the largest start-up fund of all time when it went live at the start of summer.
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DWS Investments, formerly Deutsche Bank Asset Management, has signed a € 240 billion fund administration deal with BNP Paribas Securities Services for its funds in Luxembourg and Germany. Upon competition of the deal, BNP Paribas will become the fund administrator for DWS’ s actively-managed funds in the two countries, as well as the custodian and depositary bank for DWS’ s retail funds.
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BNY Mellon has completed the transition of DWS’ s real estate fund accounting services worth $ 21 billion in assets onto its platform.
The go-live completes a threeyear
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project of migrating DWS’ s real estate portfolio, representing one of the industry’ s largest fund conversions to a new platform.
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Deutsche Bank is in the process of rebuilding its prime brokerage business, after significantly deleveraging the unit over the past year. The German-based bank announced in May that it had reduced its balance sheet exposure in prime finance and the rates business by € 80 billion.
˜˜Northern Trust has developed enhanced reporting and analytical tools in partnership with FIS to provide private equity managers with greater transparency into fund operations. Private equity funds are increasingly looking to outsourcing as their business grows and strategies become more complex. This is leading to higher demands for services which hedge funds have more traditionally sought such as increased transparency.
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SS & C Technologies has begun integrating DST Systems into its fund administration business and has appointed its own co-head of hedge fund services to oversee the operation. SS & C completed its $ 5.4 billion acquisition of DST Systems in April, bringing the latter’ s mutual fund administration business ALPS into its fund administration offering.
˜˜ Investor services firm SGG
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Group plans to take over private equity and real estate fund administrator Augentius, marking the latest takeover in the fund administration world. The deal will see SGG Group take on $ 124 billion of Augentius’ assets under administration to take its total to $ 400 billion across alternative institutional funds and family offices.
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Apex Group has added $ 170 billion in assets under administration to its business after completing the deal for Deutsche Bank Alternative Fund Services.
The deal was initially announced in October 2017.
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BNY Mellon has entered the FX prime brokerage service arena, taking on rivals such as Citi, Deutsche Bank and JP Morgan. The custodian bank is looking to allow its clients to access a new source of much-needed liquidity in the FX space.
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A new white paper from IBM has criticised current IT systems at major prime brokers and derivatives clearing firms, claiming they are restricting cost savings. The paper, published with Cinnober’ s subsidiary Minium, highlighted that outdated systems used by banks are not fit for purpose for today’ s current regulatory environment.
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Ultimus Fund Solutions has expanded its flagship mutual fund distribution platform to include new marketing and data
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services. The Ultimus Distribution Advantage( UDA) platform will include new tools, programmes and content in one centralised Resource Marketplace.
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A new fund administration association led by JP Morgan, State Street and Citi fund services veteran Chris Meader has added three new members.
Stone Coast Fund Services, Basiz Fund Services and North Street Global join the North American Fund Administration Association( NAFAA), which launched at the start of the year. Apex Fund Services was the first to join in February this year.
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Brown Brothers Harriman( BBH) has launched a new tool allowing asset managers to oversee the net asset value( NAV) function performed by their third-party administrators. Designed for the asset manager’ s middle-office and treasury teams, BBH’ s InfoNAV allows them to not only monitor the process, but it can create a secondary or informational NAV which can then be compared to the fund administrator’ s NAV.
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Fund services provider Citco is nearing $ 1 trillion in assets under administration( AuA) following a wave of new private equity and real estate fund outsourcing mandates. Citco reported AuA of $ 950 billion at the end of 2017, up by nearly 16 % year-on-year, largely due to growth in real assets by alternative fund managers.
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