Abstract

In this thesis, the possibilities for Citco Fund Services (CFS) to expand its presence in the Swedish market have been investigated. CFS is the world largest fund administrator and provides its services to hedge funds, fund of hedge funds, private equity funds and real estate funds. Real estate funds have however been excluded from this thesis since this market is very small in Sweden. In an index containing 75 Swedish hedge funds only 9% had outsourced their administrational work to CFS. Sweden is a country in the northern part of Europe with a population of 9.5 million. Sweden has its own currency, Swedish Krona, and had in 2013 a GDP of approximately 400 billion Euros. 

This thesis consists of a theoretical framework, a deep review of Sweden and CFS as well as an outlook of the Swedish and European economies. All the chapters have been analysed which has resulted in a conclusion and finally a recommendation for CFS.

The research question in this thesis was: What is the potential for CFS to expand its presence in the Swedish market? To simplify to answer this question, three sub questions were composed as stated below:

• What is the status of the Swedish financial market?
• Which services does CFS provide?
• What is the outlook of the Swedish financial market?

For each sub question there is one chapter that deeply describes the information needed to answer it. The theoretical framework gives the reader a deep understanding needed to be able to interpret the chapters.

The status of the financial market in Sweden is good. The financial crisis in 2008 did not have as large impact on Sweden as on other countries because of numerous reasons. Some reasons discovered in this thesis are that Sweden learned the lesson from its bank crisis in early 1990s, and that the Swedish currency weakened in an early phase of the crisis in 2008, which led to increasing export.

CFS has 40 years’ experience of administrational services to hedge funds and 20 years to private equity funds. CFS offers independent valuations of assets, which became more important after the Madoff scandal was reviled.

In this thesis four interviews have been conducted, in which three of the interviewees were professionals from the Swedish financial market and one was a manager at CFS. All four had a positive view of the future but noted that there are some threats to the Swedish economy.

CFS is recommended to look into the possibilities of expanding its presence in Sweden. The Swedish economy is relatively strong and has proven to handle a crisis, such the one in 2008, fairly well. It is also likely that it will be a growing demand for independent administrational services in the future and that the fund market in Sweden will grow. CFS is also recommended to focus more on funds that perform their valuation in-house, fund of hedge funds and new start-up funds.