Business Advisory

A Full Range of Thought Leadership & Professional Consulting Services

Citi Prime Finance has launched a full service advisory practice combining industry thought leadership with market leading consulting services. The service is intended to support a client through all aspects of growth and maturity from start-up services through to services designed for highly evolved funds facing multi-national challenges. The Business Advisory team bases their work around a unique Hedge Fund Maturity Model developed through extensive research and client feedback. As clients mature, we expect all aspects of the supporting organization and infrastructure to evolve. Our advisory services have been developed around supporting the unique challenges at each evolutionary step.

Industry Analysis & Reporting

Quarterly Whitepapers

Our industry experts publish quarterly white-papers on a wide variety of relevant industry topics covering the macro environment, regulatory developments, and overall evolution of the Alternative Investment marketplace. Recent publications include:

Surveys & White Papers:

• December 2012 Hedge Fund Business Expense Survey: Industry-Wide Benchmarks for Managing a Hedge Fund Organization
• June 2012 Institutional Investment in Hedge Funds: Evolving Investor Portfolio Construction Drives Product Convergence
• June 2012 Moving Into the Mainstream: Liquid CTA/Macro Strategies & Their Role in Providing Portfolio Diversification
• February 2012 Day One and Early Stage Investor Allocations to Hedge Funds
• February 2012 Form PF: The Impact on Private Fund Advisors
• January 2012 US Benefits: A Guide for Hedge Fund Managers
• January 2012 Hedge Fund Start-Up Guide
• January 2012 An Overview of the Asia Pacific Hedge Fund Technology Landscape
• December 2011 Prime Custody: Achieving Asset Protection & Operational Simplicity
• November 2011 A Flexible Operating Model for Building, Managing or Launching a State-of-the-Art Firm
• September 2011 Annual Hedge Fund IT Survey: Managing Your Hedge Fund IT Spend to Achieve Differentiation
• June 2011 Global Pension and Sovereign Wealth Fund Investments in Hedge Funds: The Growth and Impact of Direct Investing
• March 2011 A New Era of Compliance: Dodd-Frank Private Fund Manager Regulation
• December 2010 Planning for Change: Understanding the Hedge Fund Maturity Model
• July 2010 The Liquidity Crisis & Its Impact on the Hedge Fund Industry

For copies of these publications please join our distribution list by emailing prime.advisory@citi.com.

Management Consulting

Start-up Services

Our start-up service provides a full suite of functions to help a new fund establish their infrastructure and begin actively managing a portfolio. The client is assigned a specialist consultant who works with them throughout the initial lifecycle of setting up infrastructure, establishing resource and support services, and creating a baseline technology and operations architecture based on industry best-practices. The service includes:

• Real Estate Services
• Establishing core HR & Benefits functions
• Establishing infrastructure & technology

Business Management Services

Our business management practice provides clients with advice on all aspects of growing a fund franchise including the requirements and constraints encountered when opening an Emerging Market regional office, the impact of domestic & regional regulations, developments in international tax law, and managing expenses and infrastructure costs. The service will help a client address their overall organizational design while moving into new investment products and markets and will provide connectivity to a global network of industry experts to address challenges faced when expanding a business. The service includes:

• Domiciles & Structures
• Regulatory Advice
• Legal Advice
• Tax Implications
• Budget & Expense Analysis
• Organizational & Governance Best Practices

Operational Review Services

Our operational consulting service gives an established fund a set of tailored assessments to evaluate operational design, effectiveness, compliance, and control. The assessments can precede or compliment an investor due diligence review and are designed to identify gaps in best-practice for managing the trade execution, prime broker, and financing lifecycle with a goal of recommending where and how to make improvements. The service includes:

• Operational Best Practice Reviews
• Compliance & Procedures Reviews
• Process optimization & streamlining

Technology Consulting

Technology Services

Our technology consulting service offers clients insights on how comparable funds address business issues through the provision of various technology solutions across a range of vendors and service providers. The Hedge Fund Maturity Model details the different stages of infrastructure evolution from a start-up leveraging ASP delivery models through to an institutionalized fund managing its own fully scaled technology architecture. At each stage of development, different vendors and software tools become important and our team has deep experience with the majority of the industry products and software companies. Our team has a mix of Sell-Side, Buy-Side, and 3rd Party experience and can provide advice on all aspects of a client infrastructure. The service includes:

• Vendor Analysis & Benchmarking
• Target Architecture Definition
• Business Workflow Optimization
• IT Infrastructure Advice
• Disaster Recovery & Contingency planning

Client Facing Technology Support

Our CFT team provides Prime Broker clients an interface layer between their own technology organization and the broader Citi technology delivery mechanism. Benefits of this service include a stream-lined resolution of client technical requests, greater penetration and awareness of Citi technology, and enhancement to Citi technology due to greater incorporation of client feedback. The team works closely with Transition, Client Service, and Technology to improve the overall client experience.