Citco公司介绍.docx

The hedge fund industry is filled with revealing stories about how different groups came into being in unusual circumstances and then developed a niche over many years. It is a fair bet, however, that the story behind Citco Fund Services is one of the more memorable.To begin with, Citco is the acronym for Cura?ao International Trust Company. It was set up by the Smeets family in Cura?ao, Netherlands Antilles in 1939 to help Dutch nationals expatriate their wealth on the eve of WWII. What started as a law office evolved into a trust company. Later various tax treaties evolved between the offshore centre and the United States which eventually led to the provision of sub-fund services for offshore funds. Indeed, it was the first offshore fund launched by George Soros in 1969 that provided the genesis for a fund administration sector.Now fast forward over four decades. Soros Fund Management is still a client, the Smeets Family Foundation remains the controlling shareholder and Citco is the clear market share leader in fund administration (See Fig.1). Helping managers establish their fund vehicles outside the US helped managers from a tax planning perspective. It also gave them the opportunity to develop the ‘hedge fund model’ of using leverage and shorting securities which was prohibited under the US Securities Act./magazine/201011/images/citco1.pdfFig.1 Download larger versionIn London, Citco operates from offices in a converted Georgian townhouse in Mayfair’s Albemarle Street. William Keunen, Global Director of Fund Services, and the division’s executive management team spoke to The Hedge Fund Journal about changes in fund administration and hedge fund operations post-2008.“Everybody was impacted by the financial crisis,” says Keunen. “In our business of fund administration the traditional fee model is based on the percentage of assets under administration, although there are tiers and complexities to that. As a result of what happened in 2008 and into early 2009, ass