In addition to its recent expansion in Asia through the Vistra acquisition, Maples Fund Services has opened a three-person office in Boston, with a target of 100 employees in five years, as the firm looks to grow its onshore presence in the U.S.
With the Boston office, Maples plans to serve both domestic and offshore alternative funds, as well as target the endowments of local institutions such as universities and hospitals, which have a large presence in the Boston area.
As endowment funds become more sophisticated and look at opportunities for direct hedge fund investment, “they’re going to need more sophisticated technology or a back-office, and then it becomes do you buy, build or outsource. Then we hope that we’re a good solution to outsource their accounting and technology to us,” says Jason Brandt, Maples’ regional head of Fund Services—North America.
In June, Texas Tech mandated Maples to provide consolidated risk and transparency reporting services for its endowment fund, and Maples plans to leverage this win in Boston, using it as an example of working with endowments.
Brandt has moved to Boston to run the new office while retaining oversight of the office in Montreal, where he was based since coming to Maples in 2013. Meanwhile, Nick Watson, senior vice president, has moved from Dublin to Montreal to manages the operations team for fund administration services in that office.
Brandt also oversees the business development/marketing office in New York, and his goal is for Maples to expand into the Central Time Zone within two years, in a city such as Chicago or Dallas.
Before opening the Boston office, Maples also looked at other locations such as Los Angeles, and the firm is still considering a West Coast office down the road but chose Boston as it seemed to be the city with the fastest pipeline to profitability, and the Northeast has the largest share of alternative assets. While New York has a much larger alternative fund industry, Brandt notes that the expense ratio of doing business there does not work as well as Boston, where there is also less poaching of talent.
Joining Brandt in Boston are two new employees—Domenic Rinella, senior vice president, and Josh Poirier, vice president. All three previously worked at Deutsche Bank Alternative Fund Services. While the group works to grow both the client base and the local servicing team, the Boston office will leverage the data management and IT teams in Montreal until it grows a bit larger.
“We believe there is significant long-term opportunity in this market segment. Our Boston office will provide us further opportunity to diversify our service offering with universities, endowments, family offices and private equity firms, which are heavily concentrated in Boston,” says Brandt. “A Boston presence increases business development flexibility in targeting clients who want a local U.S.-based administrator and it also provides us with the ability to work more closely with onshore law firms and service providers.”
Maples Opens First Full-Service U.S. Office in Boston
In addition to its recent expansion in Asia through the Vistra acquisition, Maples Fund Services has opened a three-person office in Boston, with a target of 100 employees in five years, as the firm looks to grow its onshore presence in the U.S.