NAV of funds under administration in Jersey declined by £35bn to £163bn, the lowest quarterly NAV recorded in the jurisdiction since June 2006, figures released this month show.
Bank deposits fell by 2% in the three months to the end of September, to £170.6bn, the lowest quarterly total in more than four years, the data also reveals.
Funds under investment management was among the quarter’s best-performing sectors, rising by 7.4% or £1.3bn to £18.9bn. Specialist funds, including hedge and real estate funds as well as funds focused on the private equity and venture capital markets, also saw increases ranging from 9% to 12.9%, although the overall value of funds under administration fell, Jersey Finance said.
Jersey Finance chief executive Geoff Cook said that while the drop in total funds NAV was “disappointing from a marketing perspective” it will have a “minimal impact…in economic terms” because it was so largely due to a single promoter’s restructuring.
Cooke added that if the impact of this one company’s actions were removed from the figures, “the overall fund performance would have been marginally positive, with increasing numbers of new fund enquiries being received and [our] specialist funds business showing an increase”.
“This [the reorganisation by the undisclosed funds company] is not reflective of Jersey’s strong fund offering and has no effect on levels of employment nor on the profitability of our funds business,” he said, in a statement accompanying Jersey Finance’s quarterly report. Jersey Finance is the marketing arm of Jersey’s financial services industry, and it gets its figures from the Jersey Financial Services Commission.
Other data contained in the latest JFSC figures:
• The total number of funds registered in Jersey fell by 35 or 2.6% to 1,287.
• Although the number of funds created in the three month period fell, company formations rose 17%, though the number of live companies on the register fell by 624 to 33,187.
• Around two-thirds of deposits held in Jersey’s 47 registered banks at the end of September, or 66.4% of the total, were in non-sterling currencies.
Jersey Finance’s full statement may be found at www.jerseyfinance.je.
