Dublin As A Center Of Hedge Fund Expertise

HedgeCo News New Jersey-based hedge fund service provider Fi-Tek LLC has chosen Dublin for it's European headquarters. "Ireland's pro-business environment, availability of highly skilled personnel, the presence of many of our clients, and working with IDA were the key reasons Ireland was chosen as the location for our European Headquarters." Peter Marshall, Managing Director, Fi-Tek Ireland said.

The company provides software products and solutions for the alternative investments, trust, asset servicing and securities processing industries. The company's HedgeTek product, a fully integrated book and tax allocation platform for hedge funds, covers both US partnerships and unitised funds, is used by many of the leading hedge fund administrators, accounting firms and fund managers servicing over 3,500 funds with over $400 billion in assets..

"Ireland is the largest hedge fund administration centre in the world with almost half of all global alternative investment funds operated from here." Ireland's Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Innovation Batt O'Keeffe said, "Fi-Tek's decision to establish a European headquarters in Dublin shows we can out-perform rival locations for major global investments in the financial services sector. More than half the world's leading financial services firms now have operations in Ireland."

"Fi-Tek Ireland has recently gone live implementing HedgeTek with two leading global banks in Dublin," stated Subir Chatterjee, Fi-Tek founder and CEO. "Dublin has become a center of expertise for hedge fund administration globally, and our intent is to make Fi-Tek Ireland a centre of excellence for us as well."

Charter Launches London Hedge Fund

HedgeCo News - Charter Group has teamed up with Brian Taitz to launch a new hedge fund administration firm, Charter Group Fund Administration Ltd. The firm is based in London and focuses primarily on offshore funds managed by boutique fund managers.

Taitz founded and successfully managed an award-winning fund administration operation in Sydney, Australia before relocating to the UK. In Taitz’s previous firm, clients included regional Hedge Fund of the Year winners, Best Market Neutral Fund winners, other alternatives including electricity and power hedge funds, as well as established and distinguished long only boutiques.

Taitz says that the UK market is fragmented with larger administrators turning away smaller funds and relying more on their size than their service levels to win clients. This leads to clients having to look to foreign providers to fill the gap and then having to deal with a plethora of issues such as time zones and language or cultural differences. Taitz says it is re-assuring for a fund manager to know that they can deal directly with the principals of the business whose office is around the corner.

The boutique offers full service fund administration to offshore funds and caters for a wide variety of strategies including equity long/short, long only, market neutral, arbitrage, global macro, private equity, fund-of-hedge funds and others. For more traditional funds, the firm offers an attribution/ performance analysis reporting service.

The firm sees its differentiating factors as being: an unrelenting focus on service quality; having the best technology available; hiring properly qualified staff; and being based in London, in close proximity to intended clients. “Our clients are not just one of hundreds fighting for management’s attention which may be the case at the larger shops” says Taitz.

The firm also has the distinct technological advantage that all its administrative services are carried out through a single integrated system - investor registry, fund accounting, investing and complex performance fees – reducing risk and leading to greater efficiencies.

“Our key strategic differentiator, however, is to pace our growth.” Taitz continues, “As a result we will position ourselves as a premier provider of fund administration services to boutiques. We will soft close periodically to ensure that service levels are never compromised.”