Fund Operations Manager / VP (Private Equity)

An excellent opportunity for a commercially minded Private Equity Fund Operations Associate to join this growing multi-strategy Private Equity firm. This role would be well suited to someone who has qualified in audit before moving into a fund accounting role within Private equity but is now looking for a broader, more varied role that will work closely with the Investment, Operations and Legal teams.

This international company invests in private equity, real assets and debt on behalf of a broad client base of institutional and private investors. Their strategies include primary fund programs, secondaries, co-investments, real assets and private debt. They have 300 staff with over 100 investment professionals based across a network of offices.

This position is in a newly established team, whose purpose is to act as a key interface between the Global Operations team (consisting of Reporting, Transactions, Valuations and Company Data functions) and the rest of the business. It will be involved at all stages of the fund/strategy life cycle to ensure best practice operational service to those strategies.

Key Responsibilities

The main purpose of the role is to ensure on an ongoing basis that the operational and internal control frameworks are fit for purpose to adequately service the firm's clients and funds. The duties will change depending on the stage of the fund as follows:

During the product design/concept stage, acting as the key point of contact for the below workstreams:

• Liaising with treasury on the liquidity and, if applicable, borrowing/leverage strategy for the fund and commitment strategy
• Liaising with Investment and Product Support teams to understand the fund roadmap and capital deployment schedule
• Working with Risk to understand the operational and portfolio risk aspects of the product
• Working with Legal and Compliance on the proposed fund structure
• Provision of data and other information to the RFP team
• Working with Investor Relations to ensure that operational capabilities to service underlying clients are clearly defined
• Working with finance to quantify and design the framework for management fee and carry calculations as well as calculations on the costs of specific mandates
• Highlighting and communicating any issues to the Global Operations Team, and working with Global Ops to update/change any process or other changes required to process, systems, etc to ensure adequate service delivery

During the fundraising, fund closings and investment period:

• Take part in regular team meetings with Investment and Product Support teams to ensure that upcoming commitments and transactions are understood
• Attending the relevant investment team meetings to understand the current deal pipeline and future potential transactions
• Providing oversight and escalation point to the Global Operations Team for the first investor and investment transactions, valuations and reporting cycles
• Monitoring and tracking portfolio composition and underlying company data to perform direct analysis on actuals versus expectations in order to drive portfolio reporting for investment team use

Post investment period and up to the end of the harvest phase of fund:

• Contributing to external audits, including dealing with the funds' external auditors, quarterly and ad hoc reporting cycles and providing direction and oversight as necessary
• Contributing to reviews and analysis to enable decisions and discussions on fund sales, extensions and, where necessary, liquidations
• Liquidity management, including informing liquidity strategy for the maximisation of investment returns

Extension/end of Fund Life:

• Working with IST and Investment teams on fund sales processes, such as the analysis on value versus liquidity
• Working with legal, compliance and investor relations to complete the necessary steps to extend the funds (where relevant) and to produce any analysis, reporting and other information to enable decision making on this aspect of the fund
• Transitioning the fund into terminal operational servicing model

Requirements

• Qualified Accountant (ACA, ACCA, CIMA or equivalent)
• Good knowledge of private equity funds and the processes involved in servicing these funds
• Experience in an operations environment in private equity
• Experience in designing, monitoring and understanding the internal controls frameworks in place at each stage of a fund/product life cycle
• Excellent communication skills, both written and verbal and the ability to develop meaningful partnerships
• Problem solver: an ability to, and an interest in searching for solutions to problems and establishing the root causes of any issues that arise
• Experience of building strong relationships with a range of internal stakeholders