Hello, and welcome back to Top of the OPS, a podcast brought to
you by The Drawdown. My name is John Whitaker.
I'm the editor of The Drawdown and your host for this pod.
In each episode of Toto, we take a closer look at a hot topic in
private markets. And in today's episode, we'll be
taking a closer look at the challenges of transferring from
one fund administrator to another.
Once again, our conversation is sponsored by the good people of
HSBC Innovation Banking. From mid market private equity
to venture capital, innovation needs different.
Our episode partner, HSBC Innovation Banking offers
tailored financing, foreign exchange and banking solutions
to match evolving needs. Backed by deep sector expertise
and global reach, It's Strategic Fund Solutions team are here to
help UK clients achieve their financial goals.
Discover more at hsbcinnovationbanking.com.
As always, I'm joined today by the Mitchell Stark and Scotty
Bolland of Private markets Journalism, Tanya Kuchel and
Matthias Plotz, reporter and deputy editor at The Drawdown
respectively. How are you guys doing?
Pretty well. Thanks, John.
Looking forward to the company Christmas party on Friday.
But to be honest, at this point I am like 90% confident you're
just making names up. I still don't know who that is,
but I will sadly miss the Christmas party because I will
be gallivanting in sunny India soon so.
But I hope it's fun. Yeah, as you can tell, we're
recording this in the lead up to Christmas, which means we're all
getting into the festive spirit. Unfortunately, it's less festive
fun for England's cricketers down Under right now, but that's
the only clear I'll give to the reference this episode.
Anyway, let's move on to today's topic.
In part, it's been inspired by one of our recent cover
features, which Matthias wrote. So, Matthias, do you want to
walk us through what we'll be talking about today?
Gladly, it's not cricket. So my latest cover feature was
about fund administration and I kind of started out from a point
of frustration, which is to say that for a while now I've kind
of noticed that fund administrators are the service
provider operational professionals complain about the
most. However, at the same time, a
good third of the fund administration industry is
backed by private equity. So this was kind of the the
starting point for what became a very long research into where
the issue exactly is. And as with anything in life,
it's a complicated set of market dynamics and the need for the
relationship between the GP and their fund admin to evolve.
And if any listeners would like to know more, it's on the TDD
website. Go check it out.
Plug plug. Yeah.
And any regular reader of the drawdown will be familiar with
those typical complaints by GPS that it's incredibly difficult
to change fund administrator, yet service quality is not
always as high as end users would like.
There's a high volume of staff churn, particularly in
competitive jurisdictions like Luxembourg, and the technology
they use can often be outdated and poorly integrated.
All of these problems are then exacerbated by the near constant
level of consolidation and M&A in the fund admin space.
M&A in the fund admin space has actually shown no signs of
slowing down. It is of course tough to stay
under under the radar as a fund admin because they're evolving
client needs and admins have to keep up.
And sometimes consolidating with another fund admin becomes the
better choice. But it's not always the best for
GPS because it can cause disruption in the operations and
so on. Yeah.
And so as as part of my research, I had a couple of
conversations about the stickiness of the fund admin
business and the challenges of unsticking and changing your
fund administrator. And so actually for today's
session, I invited Aiden O Flanagan.
I sincerely hope I pronounce that name correctly, Director
and Group Head of Funds at the Fund Admin Hive and to talk more
about it because Hyvan has fund admin transfers as a specific
part of the service offering and they have won the accolade for
best Fund Admin in the category for several years in a row at
the Jordan Awards. So I really couldn't think of a
better person to have this chat with.
Unfortunately, I am not there in person.
So over to you, John. So I'm delighted to be joined by
Aiden from Hi, Vern. Aiden, thank you for joining us
on the podcast today. And as you know, we're talking
about fund admin transfers. Keen to get your, your insights
into this because, you know, hi Vern, you know, specifically
focuses on this area. So we'll dive straight into it.
Can you talk us through the situations AGP would consider
fund admins instead of simply just signing with a new fund
admin for the next fund and keep the current one for the current
fund that they're running? Why would AGP decide to go down
the route specifically of doing a transfer?
Sure. I mean, it's generally just
comes down to a breakdown in the relationship and service
quality. You know, it's poor
responsiveness from the administrator.
There's lots of errors that might be compliance issues.
That's usually what it comes down to.
It gets to a point where it, you know, the cost of staying, you
know, it's just the risk is too high basically.
So the, you know, the, the hassle of making that transfer,
it just outweighs that cost basically.
And if I put into numbers for you, you know, 6-7 years ago,
you know, we did our first transfer and we had three at the
same time from three different clients.
And since then about 40% of our client makeup is from switch
business basically. And we've, this is a scary
statistic. We've switched business from 18
different fund administrators in the past, you know, 7-6 years
and that's quite a scary thing and some of them multiple times
as well. Well, I was going to say, are
there any in particular that you probably wouldn't name names,
but. I think most people in industry
will know who we're talking about.
There's some there that surprise though, you know, 18, that's a
lot, you know, somewhere small players, somewhere a lot very
large players, you know, and somewhere mid size.
There was a good, you know, there's a good spread, but it
always just comes down to poor service.
Yeah. And I guess the, the question
within that is, umm, so 18 different administrators where
you've seen people wanting to jump ship, umm, is that because
there are endemic problems across all administrators no
matter kind of what size they are?
Or is it because there's kind of a range of motivations for doing
so That's. A good question.
I think generally just comes down to the the culture and the
people. I mean, we all talk about
technology and technology is a good enabler, but it's it's all
about the people. If you've got good staff and
they're taken care of, yeah, generally you're going to get a
good service. You know, so the biggest thing
you look at is staff turnover or staff retention rates.
I prefer to be a bit more positive on it.
If you look at staff retention rates, that's got to be one of
the key stats clients should be looking at.
And you know, once you start seeing the staff turnover, then
that's where things start to slip because it's hard to hire
people. It takes time to on board them
and at that point your existing staff are stretched and then
they get fed up and then they leave and it's just a self, you
know, fulfilling, you know, prophecy basically at the end,
at the end of the day. So then do you think it's fair
because there's been so much kind of consolidation and M&A
within the fund administration space that that has kind of
directly contributed to the level of churn you're seeing not
just at one or two administrators, but actually
quite, quite, you know, widely across the industry?
I think it has. I mean, when I first came into
the fund administration sector, I came from the investor
management sector and I outsourced fund administrators.
But back then I think there was only one administrator in the
world that was P backed. So it actually wasn't in, it
wasn't a an asset class like it is today, but I had terrible
service back then as well. We ended up building a middle
office team of 10 full time staff to shadow everything the
administrators were doing. And they're both global players.
I think the problem is, you know, on the, what I found with
the large global players, they just weren't right sized for us,
even though we were quite a large manager.
It just, we weren't getting a, you know, a high torch service
basically. They have loads of other big
clients giving them, you know, millions of revenue and I think
we just weren't matched properly when I look back.
Also, what we did was pretty complicated to be fair, when I,
you know, I may be a bit harsh on my administrators back then.
Now that I I'm in that seat myself, you know, because, you
know, administrators have to do an awful lot that managers
probably don't realize. There's a lot of stuff that goes
in the background that clients will never see.
That's until you're actually there, you realize there's
actually quite a lot that goes on behind the scenes.
Another thing, you know, if you look at transitions, you kind of
wonder, you know, I in an ideal world, you wouldn't move a lace
vintage. Yeah, you know, fund basically.
So fund 1-2 and three might make sense if you're launching fund 3
or fund 4 to move fund three, maybe fun 2.
But one, you wonder, you know, why would they?
Yeah. And it just comes back to
service. We've done a number of them
where the first has come over and they're already just
distributing. Right.
Yeah. And they just had to get across
because they're worried there were going to be errors in the
cap tables, the distributions might be incorrect as results,
and they just want it all across basically.
You get to used to a certain level of service and you're not
receiving it from an older vintage.
Then the the motivation for changing increases quite a lot,
yeah. Well, it's, it's higher risk
because it's and it's a much more cumbersome transfer because
the amount of data points the older fund is you've got
thousands of different data points.
So it's a fairly cumbersome move and I wouldn't take it lightly,
but it just shows you how big bad things are with their
relationship that they feel like they have to move that
structure. OK, basically, and I know
another reason why generally probably makes sense is if
you're getting a new administrator to do the next
funds just for ease and operational ease, just have it
all. You know that have the same LP
experience for investors, the same reports etcetera, same
branding, all these different, the same experience basically.
It might make sense to move everything across, but we have a
number of examples where the funds, the existing funds
haven't been moved across us. We've just been given the brand
new one and move forward and they've worked with two
administrators basically and then on each new fund we get the
new fund and then it gradually the old administrator
disappears. Yeah, basically.
So phased out instead? Yeah, OK.
So we, we've talked a little bit about the demand there and it's,
you know, hi Vern was kind of from the outset saw that
opportunity. Let's dig in and build a little
bit more into the challenges, right.
So what makes them such as you've already flagged up?
You really need to consider this carefully because it's quite
challenging right to to undertake a transfer.
Yeah. No, absolutely.
I mean, the first one is data, you know, it's data migration
and the complexity around this. And obviously the older the
vintage, the more complex that gets.
And going back to the amount of data points you're going to
have, the records, you know, moving that across quite
difficult and time consuming. Generally the burden falls on
the new fund administrator. I mean, the amount of time we
spend on transitions are, you know, quite extensive.
And it also depends on technology and it depends on the
outgoing administrators. Technology, some administrators
and ones you would expect would have good technology don't have
good technology. So you're ending up having to
basically manually do everything, manually input, you
know, bookkeeping from day one, from inception.
And we've done that quite a lot rather than just being able to,
you know, lift, you know, lift it from them, then pump it into
our systems. You know, so we have a, a
mixture of both. So, yeah, a lot around data
complexity, I would say, and the volumes also, we got to think of
that LP communications, you know, you know, there's a bit of
a, what would I call, you know, you, you need to manage your
optics around why you got it wrong because you did choose
this administrator, why you're moving, you know, so you got to
make a very positive experience for the LP.
You know, it's got to be in their interests and it's, you've
got to be proactive on it. So it's getting that upfront
communication to LP's if you think that's necessary.
Maybe some LP's don't care, I don't know.
But generally that's, you know, that's got to be higher at the
top of the GP's mind when they're looking at
transitioning. Yeah.
Another aspect of that with the LP's is, is KYC and generally,
you know, there's a good chance there's going to be some KYC
remediation. If you've had a poor service,
there's a good chance you know there's going to be some poor
records there. Yeah, and pretty much I would
say 80% of the transitions we've did, probably more we've had to
remediate. KYC is one of those parts where
you have to remediate, you have to do some KYC refreshes.
I think whenever I talk to GPS who are thinking of moving,
that's one of their big worries and concerns.
But in the end, when you do it #1 you're take care of an issue
that could come back to haunt you because AML legislation is
so strict. And that's where the biggest
penalties are. If you get caught for not having
the right CDD on file, that could come back to haunt you.
On top of that, to this day, we've never had a complaint or
any negative feedback from LP's when we've gone out to refresh
KYC. They, I think they're just used
to it at this stage. You know, maybe, you know,
especially the sophisticated investors, you know, maybe the,
the less sophisticated investors may not be used to all this KYC,
but I think we all are at this stage.
I think timing as well. You, you know, when do you time
a transfer? You know, if you, you can't, you
know, doing a mid close is a terrible idea.
You know, if you're making an investment, you're drawing money
down from investors. You know, that's probably a bad
time to time it around then because we won't have access to
the bank accounts yet, you know, and a distribution's a terrible
idea. So in an ideal world, the best
time to do it is when end of year audit basically where the
outgoing administrator finalises that audit.
So whether it be it gets signed off end of February, end of
March and you do that switch, you do the transition on that
date basically. Yeah, in the background, we're
doing all the record keeping. We're putting everything on into
our systems, whether it's manually or automatically and
checking all the data and reconciling.
That's probably the best time to do it doesn't always fall that
way. Unfortunately, we have done ones
where we've had to share the audit and it's quite a
complicated process. It's very painful because the
outgoing administrator wants nothing to do with it, even
though they have the the history and they've probably their,
their staff probably been on the board of these companies.
So we haven't been on the board. So it's hard for us to sign off
on an audit when we haven't been there, whereas the existing
directors might cause hassles and refuse to sign.
So there can be some complications around that.
Yeah, absolutely. A couple of things that you said
there thought worth circling back on.
So one around the data point and maybe there's there's a simple
answer to this. But when you're talking about
the added complexity, particularly of older funds and
the quality of data, does that suggest that actually it's going
to become easier for managers as we assume kind of the data
integrity and and governance around that improves as process
become more automated? Is it going to become more of a
viable option for managers to switch because there's less of
the complications of kind of creaky data?
See The thing is, I don't really necessarily see it as a
complication for the GP. We end up doing all the work.
Quite. Frankly, you know, the GP needs
to be there to, you know, you know, we give regular updates to
them. And if there's any issues or
slowness or lack responsiveness from the outgoing administrator,
we need them to see can they use any levers.
But in the end, it's also doing all that work.
So does it, will it make it any easier?
Hopefully. But you're going to rely on
every administrator in the world to be as clean on data and to
have their data warehouses and to have data integrity.
And I'm not convinced you're going to have that is the
reality, because some won't have the resources to put into it,
basically. And maybe you'll get to a point
where some administrators just disappear over time if they have
an investor property in data, basically.
But I don't think it's going to change overnight, to be honest
with you. We're we're not pointed towards
some sunny uplands quite yet. It's in terms of kind of.
Well, I think data transparent, I don't think also you have to
think about how good is that data anyway.
If you're talking about you're getting a poor service, there's
a really good reason you're getting a poor service, right?
And that correlates to poor records.
And that just from our experience, you know, in
generally most transitions we get the record keeping is awful.
I mean, we have some instances where there's three years and
there are no board minutes for these GP companies, especially
offshore. It's all about managing
substance, economic substance and substance offshore.
And there's three years of outstanding minutes, minutes for
that board, you know, and they're, you know, snow in the
background. They're recreating those board
minutes. And they're, you know, so
there's, you know, the problem is even if you have the
technology in place, you're getting a poor service.
That probably means there's going to be remediation.
There's poor data there. You're not going to be able to
rely on that data coming across. And what are the common pitfalls
that you see in terms from the G PS perspective if they're
looking to go through this process?
Yeah, I mean, there's remediation surprises, I've said
it a few Times Now. You you're going to have to
assume you've, you've got a poor service.
There's going to be a clean up exercise to do.
However, we deal with most of that, you know, so, but you just
have to be realistic. It's not going to be clean and
smooth sailing basically. The other thing I'd say is
underestimating the time it takes.
I mean, it's, I mean most fund administration agreements have
three months notice periods in there.
So when you terminate guaranteed it'll never take three months.
It's we've only managed to do 1 within the three months
transition out of all those transitions we've done.
All them extend way beyond that. Good reasons for that.
It's a complex exercise. You know there is the outgoing
administrator is no longer incentivize.
You're no longer a client. They're losing you.
You're getting a poor service. Before you fire them, imagine
what kind of service you're going to get now.
You know, they don't see you're not the existing client anymore.
They're going to move on and prioritize other clients.
The other thing is they're losing revenue.
So the outgoing administrator might want to extend this
process a bit more so they keep getting paid revenue beyond the
three months. So there's lots of, you know,
lots of reasons why it takes longer.
You know, there is a lot of information though that we need.
We, we generally do need the three months, you know,
reviewing all the KYC, getting all the, all, the, all the
records, putting everything onto our system, reconciling it.
It does take a good three months.
Umm, but generally it just depends how quickly we can get
the information from the outgoing administrator and then
we can start doing that work. But yeah, I think just be
realistic on, you know, when you serve that notice, find out what
happens after that notice period as well if it if it lapses,
because generally it does lapse. And that's another thing they
need to be wary of choosing the wrong administrator again.
You know, do your due diligence, get client references,
especially from client references that have moved from
another administrator to this administrator you're talking to.
You know, get their references, get data from the administrator
on client turnover, client satisfaction, client complaints,
all that kind of stuff. You know, staff retention.
They're probably the key things to be looking at, basically.
I would say so, yeah. I just don't make that once
burned, you know, twice shy and all that.
Well, make sure you don't have people do make this mistake
again. Yeah.
That's the reality. You have sympathy for GPS as
well, right, Because it's quite a fluid and evolving market,
right where there's, as we said before, there's lots of like M&A
and and so actually keeping track of.
Where anyone administrator's reputation is at anyone time is
is is a challenge. It is, yeah, yeah.
And it's, and it's a hard one. It's, it's all about trying to
find an administrator that can scale but at the same time
retain good client service. And that's something we're
always looking at. We think that's the, you know,
that's that that's our vision basically as we, if we can
become a scalable business, we don't want to be the biggest
business in the world. We want to, our target is the
mid market. Basically, you know, we want to
be the best mid market fund administrator in the world.
And to do that, you know, we, we need to be, while we're scaling,
we need to do it slowly and methodically and not go jump
from 200 staff or 300 staff to 2000 staff overnight.
You know, it's none of that. It's it's gradually increments,
increments organically. So, you know, for, for us, we're
investing an awful lot in this conundrum.
Basically, you know, how do you scale, but at the same time
retain your, your, your client satisfaction levels.
And we've managed to do it all these years and we still do it.
But we're investing an awful lot in technology.
And we do actually believe technology will be part solution
to this. It enables staff, but also it
can get, we can get it to the point where it takes away tasks
and majority, maybe not 100% of tasks that administrators have
to do, but there's so much stuff in the background they have to
do that they're boring, mundane piece of work that if you could
free your existing staff up away from those kind of things or the
majority of those or, you know, you might not get, be able to
get 100% of every task automated, but it's getting 70
percent, 80% of it automated. Then you're at a point where
those staff are freed up to just focus on the client relation.
Basically. It then means you don't have to
hire as many people. Yeah.
And that's the biggest problem with scaling.
You're always out trying to hire people.
There aren't enough good people out there well trained.
That's one of the biggest challenge we have actually, is
with these large administrators now they're all siloed off into
one specific task and one role, whereas we're across functional
teams. So whenever we hire someone,
they're, you know, you know, they're, they're quite senior,
but they're not as good as our junior people 'cause they're,
they're not trained on all the other aspects that our team are
trained on. So it's, it's, you know, so
that's our biggest thing we're trying to fix.
Yeah, but you're right. GPS, it's, it's a, it, it, I
don't envy them. No, I have to say.
Yeah. And, and, and, and that last
point is really interesting because to me it kind of mirrors
the experience of GPS themselves, right, Is if you
scared as AGP and you've had, and Tanya has written about this
recently, you scared as AGP. You have ACFO that's grown with
the business and they are multifunctional and they know
how everything works. But as the team is growing,
everyone underneath them is siloed.
So then replacing that CFO if they leave is a huge challenge
because how do you find that individual who knows how to do
everything and certainly no one externally is going to
understand all the different aspects of businesses.
So then that's a challenge if you're bringing someone in
externally as well. So it sounds like it's a similar
problem for you know yourselves as a fund administrate as you as
you scared as well. Absolutely.
I mean, if you look at some of the fund administrators with
10,000 staff or 5000 staff, I don't know how they do it quite
frankly. And the reality is they don't,
you know, they, they, they focus on their premium clients and
then you get the, the B team or the C team on the other clients
or the 9:00 team. And 9:00 team.
You know, and that's the, you know, 'cause it's just no, no
one's figured out the scaling issue yet.
We think we have and it's going to take some time and a lot of
real cash to do it. Umm, but we're lucky.
We, we're all on the same platform, all in the same
systems. You know, it's a much easier for
us. We haven't bought different
systems and trying to integrate systems and all this kind of
stuff. We're so we've got a pretty
simple platform to work from which I think makes it
achievable for us. OK.
And just to wrap up then let's talk about advice you would give
to the CFO of a mid market GP who's thinking about undertaking
a a fund admin transfer. Then what?
What are the key things that they need to be weighing up in
their mind? Yeah.
I mean, well, one is, you know, the cost of staying versus the
hassle of moving basically, you know, is it going to damage your
reputation? It's going to make your life
easier. How much spend time you're
spending as a result of the service you're getting or lack
thereof. You know, are you getting
complaints from your LP base? You know, our call notices going
out till late, you know, all these differently.
Are you getting paid your management fees because the
delays and call notices? You know, then as a manager,
you're not getting your GP, you're not getting your fees
till, you know, two months late or something like that.
You hear all these war stories, you know, so I, I think, and the
only thing I would say is every single client that we have
transitioned, if you ask them now, did they regret it?
Not one will say they regret it. Yeah.
So it's, it's one of those ones where when you do it, you're
like, why didn't we do this sooner?
You know, and the problem is time and bandwidth, you know,
for, for, for GPS. So the CFO needs to make sure he
has, he's got a bit of bandwidth or his team has a little bit of
bandwidth to go through this process, even though they won't
be involved in the full detail. We're going to have weekly calls
with them to tell them where we're at.
They're going to, we're going to need them to to squeeze in the
administrator, the outgoing administrator sometimes.
So there is input, they'll be having negotiations with the
outgoing administrator in the background.
So there's a bit of there is work for them to do because
you're not the heavy lifting, but it's still time and effort
from on their part. In an ideal world, they would
have a load of data themselves and all the documentation, and
they would have everything. The administrator has an idea
where they have it, and they have it saved nicely.
And it's nice and organized so that if we're not getting timely
information from the outgoing administrator, we can lean on
the CFO and his team and they can send us off across the
information. Yeah.
Just just to pick up on that, there's, there's such a push
away from kind of shadow accounting within the industry
generally, but you see why fund administrators might be so keen
on it because it protects their position even more, right?
Well, well, yeah. Well, I mean, but even Even so,
you just need the records. I mean, you know, just send us
over all the cap cat statements, all the, you know, you know, the
board minutes, all the, you know, there, there, there's
simple stuff that you'd be surprised, you know, KYC, if
they copies the KYC, that's a big one, right?
Umm, that would all help. You know, umm, them replicating
the accounting. I, I think in some instances it
would help. We had one example where we
transferred 7 funds over and it was one of the worst transitions
we've ever been involved in. And we had to reconstruct 2 of
the funds from day one. And there were the early funds 1
and 2. The Capcast statements were
incorrect, incorrect distributions were being given
to investors. So we had to do a mass
remediation exercise, then go out to LP's and then reinstate.
And yeah, but had they not done that on final distribution it
you know, it, it would have been pretty bad, you know, and and
the embarrassment and the reputation for the manager, you
know, they would have been hit hard by it.
But that that transition not wanted to scare people to go
over a year. Wow, OK.
And a lot of time in RF on our side.
Yeah. Yeah.
But now it's in a brilliant position.
Basically, you know, we got the CFO emailed us there last week
saying thank you so much. You know, it was a, it was a
lovely e-mail, you know, basically, you know, which is
fun. It was always good for the team
to hear because when they're doing it, it's hell.
It's it's not great for the administrators, I have to say,
because it's hard work, these transitions.
Yeah. But if you're delivering that
end result for the GP, that's. You have such sticky
relationships then because you've, you know, and and you
only have to be a little bit better than the last time.
Only joking, you know, we, we, we pride ourselves on being
really good. Yeah.
And you by spending that time, you get a really good
relationship with the, the manager team and it becomes very
sticky relationship. Yeah, basically.
Aidan, I think we're probably out of time, but as always, it's
a pleasure to chat to you and I really appreciate you coming in
and talking us through your transfer business.
Thank you very much. It's really good to catch up
with Aiden there. I think he gave a pretty honest
and kind of frank assessment of those dynamics in the market of
why people would look to to move, but also, you know, the
challenges that you get around fund transfers as well.
Matthias, what are what are your thoughts?
I think for me, the kind of biggest point that that Aiden
made in in summation order, the biggest question I would have is
how do you know, OK, if you've decided you're only going to go
fund admin transfer, There's only so much due diligence you
can do on a potential new fund admin.
And given how complex this process is to then realize at
the end that the new fund admin maybe also isn't up to snuff or
what? What do you want it?
I think Aidan made the point earlier that he that Hiran has
done kind of so if multiple fund admin transfers for a first one
to one fund admin, then to another one and then to another
one. And I think it's kind of what I
wonder is at what point do you feel confident that you have
enough information on your potential new fund admin to go,
OK, actually not better the devil I know.
I'm going to go with this new one.
You might have just left a very big fun admin to go to a smaller
boutique one. And then in six months, there's
an article on the drawdown that tells you that your boutique fun
admin has just been bought by the previous bigger one that you
just left. And and so I guess that they had
this kind of uncertainty around what am I getting myself into
you and given the speed of consolidation in this market,
how long am I going to be into this before it changes?
Because even to go to be very topical, Hyvan underwent a
merger earlier this year and what I think it's still subject
to, you know, the usual regulatory customary approvals
there is that Aiden was talking about scale earlier.
And as Hybron scales, there is then also going to be that
question of to what extent might potentially be some of their
customers left behind. As you pointed out, that is
often a problem with these organizations getting bigger.
But without them getting bigger, they also can't take on all of
those new projects. And it all sounds like a very
complicated downward spiral that just makes me glad.
I'm very glad I don't have to undergo any fundamental
transfers in my life. On that note, we probably should
move on. I think we've kind of run out of
time for today's episode. But before we all tune out, what
should our listeners be looking out for on the draw down?
Coming up, Matthias, how about you?
Very good questions. I'm assuming this episode is
probably going to go live in the new year.
So I think that there's not a specific article or topic that I
would like to shout out. But what I would like to say is
that we've got a lot of new exciting things coming up.
And specifically on the the kind of journalistic side, there'll
be a lot more regular updates on fund or missiles and fund
administrators, on legislation on on regulation.
And I'm currently having a lot of conversations around that and
mapping out so that you will get timely information ahead of
Windows developments takes place and you can prepare for it.
Fantastic. How about you, Tanya?
So I do have one upcoming article about the European way
of doing GP stakes. Of course, it's a growing market
in the region and how GPS can remain competitive.
Apart from that, lots to look forward to in the new year.
Yeah, yeah. So we should probably wrap up
there and wish everyone a Merry Christmas and and and Happy New
Year. Though as Matthias says this,
you'll probably be hearing this in 2026.
And as he says, we have lots of exciting plans for the draw down
in 2026 and a lot more to come for our operational leaders.
So watch this space. But for now, a massive thank you
to Tanya and Matthias for joining me once again.
Thank you. Thank you.
And a thank you to our sponsor HSBC B and all of you for
listening, of course. Until next time, see you soon.