Carey Olsen tops legal adviser rankings in record year for Guernsey funds

The 27th edition of the company's Guernsey Fund report, which reveals the market shares of all service providers in Guernsey's funds industry, found that for the year ending 30 June 2021, Carey Olsen provided legal advice to 847 Guernsey regulated investment funds – more than five times the number of its nearest competitor.

Of those 847 funds, 720 were Guernsey domiciled schemes totalling US$338.9bn, which represents 83% of the entire Guernsey market by assets under management (AUM).

In addition, Carey Olsen was instructed on 60% of new funds business won by Guernsey law firms between 1 July 2020 and 30 June 2021.

Overall, Monterey Insight found that the Guernsey funds sector had enjoyed its strongest levels of growth in a decade with fund assets serviced in the island increasing to US$532.7bn at the end of June 2021, up 24.4% compared to a year previous. The number of serviced schemes stood at 1,223 and the total number of sub-funds reached 1,443 – an increase of 88 and 71 respectively from the same time in 2020.

Ben Morgan, partner and head of Carey Olsen's funds group in Guernsey, said: "Guernsey's fund industry has enjoyed an extremely buoyant period. Given the challenging economic circumstances it is incredibly impressive that Guernsey's funds sector has shown such resilience, stability and growth. It underscores Guernsey's position as a centre of excellence for the domiciliation of investment funds for many of the largest fund managers in the world.

"The considerable dominance of Carey Olsen is a credit to our team's expertise and experience and reflects the significant commitment from our clients to domicile their funds in Guernsey."

Confirmation as the leading legal adviser to Guernsey's investment funds sector follows Carey Olsen's outstanding performance in the 2022 editions of Chambers UK and The Legal 500 UK, which saw it remain the only Guernsey law firm to gain top-tier rankings in the investment funds categories of those directories.

Monterey Insight is a leading independent fund research company that provides the only comprehensive statistical analysis of service providers for all funds serviced in Guernsey, Jersey, Ireland, Luxembourg and the UK. The company's research covers around 37,000 funds and its annual reports are considered the reference point for the entire funds industry in each of these five jurisdictions.