Fund Management

What's New In Investments, Funds? - Bite Investments, Irish Funds

Editorial Staff 17 November 2021

What's New In Investments, Funds? - Bite Investments, Irish Funds

The latest offerings in investments, such as funds and structured products, and other notable developments.

Bite Investments
The drumbeat grows louder for a larger pool of investors to have greater access to alternatives. UK-based digital asset manager and fintech Bite Investments has launched its first private markets portfolio targeting high net worth investors, wealth managers, and IFAs to further these efforts.

The Bite Private Markets Portfolio will allocate into eight to 10 top-tier funds selected by Bite’s investment team, starting at a $100,000 threshold. Investments will be in core sectors of healthcare, IT, software, business and financial services, consumer, and industrials, the group has said. 

“With the public markets not generating alpha to satisfying levels and the current low-interest rate environment, investors are turning to the private markets. Our new Private Markets Portfolio is suitable for clients looking for long-term capital appreciation with alpha outperformance potential provided by co-investments and venture capital strategies,” Anna Barath, investment director at Bite Investments, said.

Bite, along with other recent entrants, is addressing a market reality of companies staying private for longer with some possibly choosing to remain unlisted, which is changing the capital raising dynamic. There is a trend for putting far more onus on obtaining reasonable access to these private companies during their various stages of growth.

The firm notes that according to Bain’s Global Private Equity Report 2020, the last two decades have seen buyout asset value grow 3.5 times faster than public equity market capitalisation.

Barath said: “Historically, individual investors have neither had access to top fund managers, nor have they been able to reap the benefits and value created as companies stay private for longer. Tomorrow’s unicorns may never even go public.”

The firm says that it is advising on around $13 billion in capital raises, and has performed due diligence on 100 plus funds and co-investments across private equity, private credit, and real assets.

Irish Funds
A body speaking for Ireland’s funds and asset management sector said that total assets run in the country stand at €3.8 trillion ($4.3 billion), rising 13.6 per cent since January. Ireland, a European Union member, has to some extent benefited since its neighbour, the UK, left the EU because fund managers are re-domiciling assets to Dublin.

Irish Funds issued the data to mark its eighth annual UK symposium.

Citing data from the Central Bank of Ireland, the total number of domiciled funds in Ireland now stands at 8,300, a growth of 7 per cent so far in 2021. 

Among the more eye-catching features, the data showed that exchange-traded funds rose more than 29 per cent from January, with assets standing at €812 billion. Net sales since the start of the year are running at €178 billion, €106 billion of which has been in ETFs.

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