Two platforms, one purpose: why the fund estate sits in Luxembourg and Dublin

IGUAKO Capital operates two European fund platforms, one in Luxembourg and one in Dublin. The second platform costs about US$1.9 million a year: two administrators, two boards of directors, two audit cycles and two regulatory calendars. In 2025 the Executive Committee asked whether it earns that money. The question matters beyond this year, because Programme Latitude allocates part of the 2028 phase to scaling the Luxembourg platform and the same test will be applied again then.

Europe carries US$214 million of the US$842 million client portfolio under stewardship. Of that European total, US$168 million sits on the two fund platforms, split US$112 million in Luxembourg and US$56 million in Dublin. The remainder sits in custody relationships in Zürich and in the Jersey and Guernsey structures that serve private clients and private equity vehicles. Luxembourg is also the European holding domicile, so the platform there carries group functions that Dublin does not.

Investor domicile is the reason for the second platform, and it is a constraint rather than a preference. Twenty-three institutional investors in the European book are limited by their own governing documents, or by their own supervisory perimeter, to committing through a vehicle established where their depositary and administrator sit. Fourteen of them can commit only through Dublin and nine only through Luxembourg. Collapsing to one platform would return commitments of about US$61 million to one group or the other.

The two centres are also good at different work. Luxembourg administers the closed-ended vehicles holding private equity and structured credit positions, where the discipline is capital calls, quarterly valuations and long holding periods. Dublin administers the open-ended vehicles used by the Quantitative division, where the discipline is daily dealing, daily pricing and a different depositary relationship. An administrator asked to do both at once would do one of them less well.

Separate in execution, single in purpose. Both platforms run one investment process, one valuation policy, one conflicts register and one eligibility standard. A position is approved by the Investment Committee before it reaches either vehicle, and the valuation delivered to an investor in Dublin is the valuation delivered to an investor in Luxembourg. Each platform board includes one director who also sits on the other, which is the mechanism that keeps the two calendars aligned in practice.

The measure applied in 2025 was simple: the commitments that would be lost if the second platform closed, less the cost of running it. On this year figures the Dublin platform earns its cost by a margin of about US$1.2 million, and the margin has widened in each of the last three years as the open-ended range has grown. The test is repeated annually and reported to the Executive Committee. If the margin closes, the platform closes with it.

Published 2025-07-15 by the Investment Banking division. Research is prepared for eligible counterparties and does not constitute advice.