Head of
The Drawdown (TDD): You recently joined
After qualifying in 2003, I moved out of finance into
At the same time, DB was building its offering in the fund space, with my group acting as a loan servicing middle office because we had the infrastructure to do so. We developed this offering around servicing loans for private debt funds which became important at DB, especially to leverage technology in our service offering, so I spent time with the tech team building that up.
Finally, I spent the last two years moving DB's corporate services book over to the
TDD: Your role is head of
NB: I'm responsible for a team of 10 people who cover everything from private clients to corporate services, funds and corporate trust work. There's a big strategic focus on growing our private funds servicing franchise, as well as the corporate trust side of the business too.
Unlike my role at DB, which entailed two years of shutting a business down, our main focus here is building
Following our merger earlier this year, we are integrating the Estera business, and the offices in
There's also a big focus on certain types of services and products emerging. Professional investor fund structures are currently going through legislation and we're taking the lead to work with all stakeholders across the value spectrum when they are launched next year. That way, we'll be extremely well placed to add this service to our product offering to clients.
TDD: In your most recent position at
NB: Like every other bank which divested such a business, it wasn't compatible with a capital markets/investment banking franchise.
A huge amount of work went into finding appropriate models for separation. In the end we had some 1,700 or so client structures we had to move. The main challenge was getting the legal documents executed in the various required forms because we had everything from debt issuance vehicles, employee benefit trusts, the works; everything across the private and public capital markets spectrum. We also had to get consents for various things based on documentation that often went back as far as the 90s.
From a regulatory perspective, we had to advise local regulators about our due diligence on
TDD: What is your take on the consolidation trend we're seeing in the fund admin space?
NB: There's a fast pace of change out there. If I look at our competitors, some have been on a rampant acquisition race. From our perspective, we're more considered and want to ensure we're doing the right balance of acquisitive bolt-ons and organic growth.
I think some of our competitors are having to digest and integrate quite a bit. That presents an opportunity to firms like us that we can use to our advantage.
Aggressive pricing is also another factor which does concern me a little, as I saw it happen in the corporate trust space. However, that's a life cycle matter and how it plays out as we await the tsunami of potential opportunities driven by the current environment, only time will tell.
Clients have to be at the centre of what we do. Adaptability is key, and whilst we don't run a book where every single thing is bespoke, there's still a lot of individual focus and attention.
I am really excited to have joined
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*Article originally published in The Drawdown on
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