Northern Trust has been selected by Nestl to provide an asset servicing solution for its new Common Contractual Fund (CCF). Services that will be provided by Northern Trust include custody, fund administration and performance reporting. In addition, Northern Trust provided project management, and tax and legal experts who assisted in the funds successful launch.
The Ireland domiciled CCF is a recognised tax-transparent, cross-border, asset pooling vehicle designed to enhance investment performance, governance, oversight, administrative control and investment management decision-making. The fund is open to Nestl pension plans around the world and, at launch, plans from several countries will be investing.
Northern Trust is a leader in tax-transparent asset pooling, says Jean-Pierre Steiner, CEO of Nestl Capital Advisers. Its extensive experience and expertise in launching and administering tax-transparent funds was helpful and comforting to us. Nestl Capital Advisers is not new to the concept of pooled vehicles we have had a pooled fund in the form of an Irish unit trust since June 2001 through our Dublin domiciled Robusta fund range. However, we were attracted to efficiencies that can be gained through a tax-transparent vehicle such as the Dublin-domiciled CCF.
This latest launch brings to 18 the number of tax-transparent and non tax-transparent umbrella and single strategy funds supported by Northern Trust for multinational and investment manager clients. Included in the range of tax-transparent funds administered by Northern Trust are Irish CCF, Luxembourg Fonds Commun de Placement (FCP), and Dutch Fonds voor Gemene Rekening (FGR) fund types.
Northern Trust is a pioneer in cross-border pooling and was the first to fully support tax-transparent funds for multinational corporations created to pool the assets of investors with multiple tax rates, investing in multiple jurisdictions. Northern Trust has approximately US$48 billion in assets under custody globally, in both tax-transparent and non-tax-transparent funds, as at 30th September 2009. The funds administered by Northern Trust support multiple countries of investment, multiple countries of investor, multiple asset classes and multi manager funds.
In 2007, Northern Trust became the first asset servicer to secure reduced withholding tax rates for investors holding Italian equities through a tax-transparent, cross-border pooling vehicle. In 2008, Northern Trust achieved a milestone in cross-border pooling after it secured a U.S. Department of Labor opinion regarding the investment of ERISA pension plan assets in offshore-domiciled, tax-transparent pooled funds such as the CCF, FCP and FGR.
D.C.