Independent fund research company, Monterey Insight, has published the 25th edition of its Guernsey Fund Report, which reveals the market shares of all service providers.
Among legal advisers, the top three ranking remains the same as last year with Carey Olsen keeping their lead, having offered legal advice to 798 Guernsey regulated investment funds. Mourant takes second place with 157 funds and Ogier the third position with 59 funds.
On the market share ranking of assets, Carey Olsen also take the top spot with US$307.0bn.
Of the 798 funds Carey Olsen provided legal advice to, 675 were Guernsey domiciled schemes, which represents 82.4% of the entire Guernsey market by AUM and an increase of US$17.2 billion (6.8%) over the year to US$270.1 billion.
Ben Morgan (pictured), partner and head of Carey Olsen’s corporate and finance group in Guernsey, said: “The year-on-year growth in AUM shows the continued attractiveness of the jurisdiction as a specialist funds centre, which is evidenced by the surge in new fund managers coming to Guernsey and a bumper year for private equity fundraising among the larger fund managers who already use Guernsey.
“As a firm, Carey Olsen is delighted to have once again retained our position as the leading legal adviser of Guernsey serviced funds, increasing our market share both by total number of funds and total assets. The results are a credit to our team’s high level of expertise, experience and dedication.”
In fourth place in the rankings is Ferbrache & Farrell. Partner Gavin Farrell said he was delighted with the position after just three years in business for the Guernsey-based firm.
“It is extremely pleasing that in such a short period of time we, as a small and Guernsey focused practice, have positioned ourselves so high up the rankings, just behind the long-established Guernsey corporate departments of three of the largest global offshore legal practices. We owe this ranking to the entire dedicated team at Ferbrache & Farrell, without whom these accolades would not occur, and to the support and confidence from our clients, both long standing and new,” he said.
Ferbrache & Farrell assisted in the launch of five funds in 2019, with a fundraising range of between £20million to in excess of £1 billion per structure. The firm also continued to advise throughout existing fund clients, both private equity and listed with their ongoing legal or regulatory requirements.
The report also states that fund assets serviced in Guernsey increased to US$412.0bn at the end of June 2019, up 3.2% compared to 2018. The number of serviced schemes stood at 1,065 and the total number of sub-funds reached 1,289 (slightly down from last year with 1,077 and 1,363 respectively in 2018).
Karine Pacary, managing director of Monterey Insight, said: “We are pleased to reveal the new results of the Guernsey Fund Industry in our 25th edition of our Monterey Guernsey Fund Report. Guernsey demonstrated strong returns during the last year and managed to once again attract major players to launch their private equity funds. We also notice a strong increase of infrastructure schemes, which has been the trend for a few years now.
“By taking a closer look at the results, we can see that those positive results were of benefit to a select group of service providers, in an overall context, the Guernsey Fund Industry has strengthened.”
