Ireland: prime real estate for private equity

The US$3.2trn custody house, Northern Trust, is officially the first private equity administrator to set up shop in Dublin. The Irish capital is already a centre for hedge fund administration but Northern Trust may be the first of many to move its private equity capabilities into town. Northern Trust has been servicing the industry for 20 years from Guernsey and will offer the same suite of services from Dublin including fund administration, financial reporting, investor relations services and corporate governance.

Paul Guilbert, head of private equity fund administration at Northern Trust said: “Our aim is to capitalise early on opportunities opening up in the Dublin market. We are already serving private equity clients in Dublin and are seeing a lot of interest in our market-leading solutions.”

Dublin is now becoming a popular domicile for private equity and private equity-related funds because it has the benefits of being an offshore centre while still being within the European Union. Given the drive towards tax harmonisation between the EU countries, Dublin’s popularity should be on the up.