Omba Investments Irish Collective Asset-management Vehicle (ICAV) has appointed Northern Trust to provide global custody, depositary and associated services for its new Ireland-domiciled UCITS umbrella fund.
The planned $100 million fund is set to launch with two new UCITS funds, the Omba Global Thematic Fund and Omba Global Equity Fund.
The umbrella thereafter, and post Central Bank of Ireland merger approval, will also incorporate the existing Omba Moderate Risk Global Allocation Fund.
The Omba Moderate Risk Global Allocation Fund currently exists as a sub-fund on the Prescient Global Funds ICAV multi-manager platform, which Northern Trust already provides custody and depositary services for.
“As we work to provide investors with low-cost diversified exposure to different asset classes, countries, sectors and currencies, we require an asset servicing provider with specialist Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) servicing capabilities to support our international investor base,” said David Pierson, director of Omba.
“Northern Trust has the scale, capabilities and technology to support the smooth operation of the fund and help our team meet its objectives.”
The Omba Global Thematic Fund is an actively-managed equity strategy which invests in a variety of equity themes through ETFs and single stocks. Meanwhile, the Omba Global Equity Fund is a subset of equity positions in the moderate risk fund, which provides investors with a diversified global equity strategy utilising country, sectoral, thematic and factor ETFs.
Over the last year, Northern Trust has won a string of asset servicing mandates. Most recently, it was appointed by Pendal Group, Guernsey-domiciled investment firm Castelnau and the Common Contractual Fund (CCF) to provide a range of services.
“Northern Trust’s 20-year history of servicing European ETFs makes us well-placed to support the strategies of clients such as Omba while delivering the accurate reporting and safekeeping services required for day-to-day fund operations. We congratulate the Omba team on this expansion of their business,” said Clive Bellows, head of global fund services, EMEA, at Northern Trust.