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Guernsey is great for private equity, says Alchemy’s Moulton

Guernsey is a great place to do business, according to Jon Moulton, founder and managing partner of private equity firm Alchemy Partners, who has made his home on the island and sang its p

Guernsey is a great place to do business, according to Jon Moulton, founder and managing partner of private equity firm Alchemy Partners, who has made his home on the island and sang its praises to more than 100 fund industry practitioner at last week’s inaugural Guernsey Private Equity Funds Masterclass in London. ‘I recommend any of you to use Guernsey for private equity – it works,’ he exhorted.

According to Moulton, Guernsey offers a solid infrastructure including not just fund administrators but accounting, tax and legal advisers. A major attraction, he said, was that Guernsey is ‘not flaky’ but has sensible laws and regulations that are always updated quickly to keep the island at the forefront of new products and services.

Moulton also praised the speed of doing business in Guernsey, saying that ‘things happen at a pace which is inconceivable in the UK’, and described the island’s taxation structure as straightforward and noticeably more stable than the regime in the UK. ‘Overall [Guernsey] is a nice place to operate,’ he said.

While the immediate prospects for the private equity industry as a whole may look gloomy, Moulton believes that Guernsey will continue to attract private equity and other types off alternative fund business.

Dale Gabbert, a London-based partner with UK commercial law firm Nabarro and a participant at the event organised by industry promotional agency GuernseyFinance, said the masterclass offered valuable insights into attractions of the island for private equity business.

‘I have in the past established private equity real estate funds in Guernsey but never pure private equity funds,’ he said. ‘However, more recently my experience has been to act as an adviser to clients investing into Guernsey funds. This was a helpful overview of what Guernsey can offer from a private equity perspective.’

According to the latest figures from the Guernsey Financial Services Commission, overall funds business in Guernsey grew by 8.3 per cent in the final quarter of 2007 to bring the total value of funds under management and administration in the island to GBP178.2bn. Private equity assets grew by GBP5.5bn or 19 per cent in the fourth quarter and by GBP13.6bn (66 per cent) year on year to reach a total of GBP34bn.

‘Guernsey is a very important jurisdiction for private equity,’ said International Private Equity Services executive chairman Connie Helyar. ‘Guernsey administers some of the largest and best known private equity funds in the industry, a number of which have relocated their entire back-office operations to the island in the last two years.’

‘This event has undoubtedly been a tremendous success in promoting the island to both existing contacts and those introducers who don’t yet have any experience of using Guernsey for private equity business.’ GuernseyFinance is planning a similar event on June 18 at the Signet Library in Edinburgh.

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