Custom House Administration & Corporate Services Ltd.,
the Specialist Fund Specialist, 

offers the
Custom House Offshore Fund Service

Custom House Administration & Corporate Services Ltd., is the primary operating company of the Custom House Group and is referred to within our Website as "Custom House".

HISTORY

Custom House Administration & Corporate Services Ltd. ("Custom House"), which was established in 1989, has two primary businesses. The first is assisting clients in the design, organisation and establishment of customised offshore funds. The second is the provision of a full administrative service to the fund, once it has been established. These two businesses are described on our Website (www.customhousegroup.com), under the broad headings of "The Custom House Fund Formation Service" and "The Custom House Fund Administration Service", where you will also find full details of these services.

MOODY'S MANAGEMENT QUALITY RATING

Custom House is the first fund administrator in the world to be awarded a Moody's Baa1 MQ (investment grade equivalent management quality) Rating.

AUTHORISATION & REGULATION

Custom House is authorised by the Financial Regulator, (formerly the Central Bank of Ireland), under the Irish Investment Intermediaries Act of 1995 (Section 10) to provide administration services to collective investment schemes and it is regulated by the Financial Regulator.

BUSINESS

Custom House clients are, for the most part, independent money managers, as well as family offices, small banks and institutions. Having said that, Custom House acted as administrator for a multi-manager currency fund, which it established for American Express Bank and also acted for a capital protected multi-manager futures fund (with 17 CTA's and daily valuations), established for Credit Suisse Asset Management, neither of which institutions could be described as "small" or "medium sized" by any stretch of the imagination.

Custom House specialises in "esoteric" funds and, indeed, Custom House describes itself as "The Specialist Fund Specialist". As such, Custom House does not, generally, act for traditional or "vanilla" funds, rather concentrating on the ubiquitous alternative investment and hedge funds, which include many varied investment strategies, such as, inter alia: long-short equity, equity-optionmerger and convertable arbitrage, high yield bonds, emerging markets, private equity, venture capital, currencies, futures and derivatives, as well as funds of funds and other multi-advisor products. As a result, the range of investment sectors represented by the funds that Custom House acts for have included a capital protected (i.e. guaranteed) currency fund that complied with Islamic investment principles, at one end of the spectrum, to a fund that was organised to invest solely in arable farmland in Argentina, at the other end.

PHILOSOPHY

Custom House currently (as at 1st April, 2005) administers over 185 funds for more than 75 investment management clients with total assets under administration of over US$13.5 billion, which reflects Custom House's commitment to working, not only with institutions, such as those referred to above, but also with emerging, or newly independent money managers, whose customised funds, inevitably, start out quite small. The Custom House philosophy and objective is that Custom House should grow with those managers, thus demonstrating its long-term commitment to its clients.

It is also Custom House's objective to provide a personal service to all of its clients, initially with regard to customising each client's own specialist fund, and then, once it has been established, providing a comprehensive personalised administration service to that fund.

PERSONAL SERVICE

Custom House's administration department utilises a team structure, whereby one individual is appointed as the dedicated administrator of each fund, thus providing each client with a named individual - someone whom they can contact directly and with whom the client can develop a close co-operative working relationship. That individual administrator is a member of a team, which provides the back-up in the case of illness or vacations. Each team has its own team leader, who is responsible for the team's operation. These team leaders, in turn, report to a section manager or supervisor, who will handle any abnormal queries or problems.  In turn, the supervisors report to and consult with their deputy manager or the manager of Custom House's administration department.

A similar structure applied to the Shareholder Services Department (Registration & Transfer Agent)

Custom House currently has a staff of approximately 88 persons. These include qualified personnel in the Administration and Corporate Services and Corporate Secretarial departments, responsible for organising and setting up offshore funds and providing Corporate Secretarial services to its fund clients.

CUSTODIAL RELATIONSHIPS

Custom House does not provide custodial services for two reasons - firstly, the obvious one that it is not a bank or a trust company. The second reason is because, in its experience, most clients have very definite pre-determined opinions as to whom they would wish to be responsible for looking after their assets.  As a result, Custom House has or has had working relationships with a wide range of custodians including, inter alia: Bank of New York, Banc One, Brown Brothers Harriman & Co., Citibank and Mellon Trust, in the United States; AIG Private Bank, Credit Suisse, HSBC Republic, Lombard Odier, Pictet et Cie, UBS of the Swiss banks. Custom House also works with Credit Suisse in the Bahamas; the Bank of Bermuda and Royal Bank of Scotland in the Isle of Man; as well as AIB, Bank of Ireland and Soc Gen in Dublin.

CHARIOT

Custom House launched "CHARIOT" (Custom House Accessible Reporting In Open Technology), its Web reporting platform, in April 2003. CHARIOT offers Investors access to their own account details - latest performance and historic confirmation notes - as well as any other information that the Manager wishes to disclose, depending upon their appetite for transparency. For their part, Managers can review up to sixty different reports, including, inter alia, their P&L, Balance Sheet, and Shareholder Register and can drill down through many other reports to view more detailed information.  CHARIOT is provided to all fund clients as part of the Shareholder Services.  For more information Link to CHARIOT

Custom House is regulated by the Financial Regulator and authorized to act as administrator of collective investment scheme under Section 10 of the Investment Intermediatories Act of 1995.

Custom House Administration & Corporate Services Ltd.
Address: 25 Eden Quay, Dublin 1, Ireland.
Tel: +353 (0)1 878 0807 / Fax: +353 (0)1 878 0827
E-mail: Dermot S.L. Butler (Chairman) dermot.butler@customhousegroup.com
        or David P.M. Blair (Managing Director) david.blair@customhousegroup.com