Andrew Brizell’s Post

A great article by James McCarthy detailing the various different approaches to legal resourcing for VC/PE managers and explaining why Corvus Group's outsourced General Counsel service can be a good fit – particularly for emerging and smaller managers!

It was great to see Carey Olsen picking up on our recent article about the costs of using EU vs non-EU fund structures. As mentioned in this article, we’d encourage non-EU managers in particular to think really carefully before committing to EU structures and the associated AIFMD compliance obligations in order to secure perceived distribution advantages; the costs often outweigh the benefits. Feel free to contact me or my colleagues James McCarthy or Dave Bridger at Corvus Group if you'd like to talk through the pros and cons of the various cross-border distribution approaches.

James McCarthy, Dave Bridger and I are absolutely delighted to announce that Karen Sands has joined the Corvus Group board as a Non-Executive Director. I'm sure that Karen will be well known to many people in my network and brings a wealth of fund operations and accounting experience to our board.

Why are so many UK PE sponsors defaulting to Luxembourg for fund structuring? LP demand, fund distribution and fund and portfolio tax advantages are often listed as key drivers, but do the real and perceived benefits really justify the costs? Surely a UK structure should be the starting point for any UK sponsor coming to market. Over the course of the coming few weeks Corvus Group will be publishing a couple of articles on this topic, starting with our fund structuring overview (see link below). If you’d like to discuss fund structuring or any of the points raised in this article, please feel free to reach out to me or James McCarthy

I'm looking forward to attending the EMex London Emerging Manager Exchange this Thursday with James McCarthy and Dave Bridger. If you or your colleagues are going to be attending, please do feel free to drop by our stand in the networking area

We’re going to be sponsoring and attending the EMex London Emerging Manager Exchange on Thursday 25 April 2024. The agenda looks great (full details available via the link below), with slots covering a range of topics including fundraising, regulatory considerations, operational resilience and service provider selection, the latter featuring our own James McCarthy as a panellist.  If you’re attending, please do drop by our stand - we look forward to connecting!

I'm really pleased to announce our partnership with TrustQuay Online. Finding a flexible systems provider that can properly handle both the administrative and accounting requirements that we have is great. We really felt that the TrustQuay Online product was strong across the board, combining great static data management, workflows, reporting tools and API connectivity that tessellates really neatly with the rest of our infrastructure. James McCarthy discusses some of the key reasons behind our decison in the following article: https://lnkd.in/d9KZjM3D

For anyone in my network who knows me well – I hope that you’ll appreciate the significance of this post! After a ‘few’ years in the making, I’m so pleased to announce the launch of the Corvus Group; comprising Corvus Advisory (our revamped existing Corvus Advisers business) and our new service line Corvus Administration. We’re joined by Dave Bridger who will be leading the Corvus Administration business – please take a look at our awesome launch video – loads more announcements to follow over the coming weeks and months!

It was great to speak with The Drawdown/Jon Whiteaker for this article. While Luxembourg has remained the fund domicile of choice for many UK managers post-Brexit, as the Luxembourg service provider market continues to overheat and substance requirements mount up, it might be time for UK based sponsors to think again about their choice of domicile. In the UK, the qualifying asset holding company regime in combination with an expansive tax treaty network provides portfolio structuring options that are equivalent to and sometimes better than the Luxembourg options available. Separately, while an AIFMD marketing passport may be attractive for expansive European distribution exercises, given that only 3% of passported funds are registered to market in more than three Member States and NPPR is available in the majority of load bearing LP Member States, it might be time to rethink the cost-benefit analysis. If you want to discuss structuring trends, feel free to get in touch with me/Corvus Advisers.