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Friday, 29th March 2024
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Driving growth in funds and debt servicing Back  
Julian Reddyhough is a managing partner of the Maples and Calder group, and managing partner of Maples and Calder’s new Dublin office, which opened earlier this year. Maples and Calder has grown from its origins in the Cayman Islands to an operation with over 500 staff in seven jurisdictions and an administrative arm known as Maples Finance. It acts for more hedge funds and more debt issuing vehicles than any other law firm.
7:15 The alarm goes off. My first reaction is to grab the Blackberry and to scroll through the emails that have come in overnight. We have operations in all time zones which means email traffic continues 24 hours a day. I will deal immediately with the easy emails and flag the more difficult ones to return to later.

8:30 I decide whether I will walk or drive to the office. My rule is that unless it looks like rain, I will walk. I drive most days and decide to drive today. It’s a journey of 1.6 miles. I am only in Dublin during the week and chose a penthouse apartment by the canal basin to be near the office. Nice in concept, but shoddy in execution, amenities and management to a degree a developer would not be allowed to get away with in London or North America.

8:45 I arrive at my office. We are currently at temporary office space by Leeson St. Bridge until we move in November into our new office space in 75 St. Stephens Green. My secretary, Corinna, brings me coffee and a printout of my schedule for the day. I will also be entirely dependent on Corinna to remind me constantly through the day where I am supposed to be and when. I then deal with the backlog of emails. These will be both internal and external, ranging from legal queries to group policy issues. I will delegate new Cayman enquiries to my Cayman practice group and allocate Irish enquiries locally. An increasingly significant part of our group is the SPV/fund administration division that operates under the Maples Finance umbrella where I also have a management role. We are particularly proud that this operation has developed from a standing start ten years ago to become the largest administrator of SPVs in the world. The fund administration side of the business is a more recent development and growing rapidly. We already have over $13 billion under administration. Each piece of fund business must be run past a Business Acceptance Committee on which I sit. As I work through the current BAC proposals (and we now have several to consider every day), I am acutely aware of the potential consequences of taking a wrong decision – particularly where the proposal is to provide external directors.

11:00 I have a site meeting with Marney, my office manager, at 75 St. Stephens Green, which is a new development in which we are taking 30,000 sq ft. Marney is an expert in managing both fit-outs and moves having undertaken similar exercises for us for five other offices in various parts of the globe. I am convinced that we have made exactly the right decision in taking this space rather than heading down to the river, which was our initial instinct. It is, without question, a world-class building. The traffic system around the Green is a mess though. It is my intention to have 200 people working in this space within the next few years.

12:00 A quick call to my wife, Ingrid, who is based in London with our four boys. That is followed by a call from an agitated Cayman fund client who has just realised his fund purported to exceed it’s authorised capital some two years ago. I will advise on this myself during the afternoon. I note the fund has an Irish local administrator.

13:00 Lunch with fund colleagues and IFSRA to mark the granting to Maples Finance of a fund administration licence under the IIA. We can now move to Dublin the $1billion fund administration book of business we have been warehousing in Cayman for Dublin and increase our recruitment drive. I remember to eat light and drink little.

15:00 Back at the office. I pull the papers on the problem fund. Thankfully in this instance, the solution is relatively straightforward and can be cured by the directors and management shareholders. I prepare an explanatory note and have a teleconference with representatives of the client. The precise legal status of an investor without shares in the interim is an interesting one.

16:30 I break from work to call my good friend and car man, Desmond Smail, in the UK. I definitely have motor oil in my blood. Desmond looks after my classic car collection and my rally car. I have had a recent run of bad luck – a Jaguar XK120 that I had in Cayman was damaged in Hurricane Ivan and is now being nursed back to health by Desmond and an Aston Martin had an ‘incident’ in France in a car transporter leaving it needing a new roof back at the factory in Newport Pagnell. Desmond brings me up to speed and also breaks the news that a van has just reversed outside his workshops into a DB6 we had just bought.

17:00 Various telephone calls with colleagues – I disclose that we have just secured a prominent local insolvency lawyer to head up that side of our Irish practice. I call Cayman for the latest CLO/CDO stats to prepare for the panel I sit on tomorrow at the Debt Conference in Monaco. It is interesting to see Ireland’s rapid advance. Irish CDOs/CLOs were running at 50 per cent of Cayman levels last year and this year are snapping at Cayman’s coat tails. Our challenge is to have our existing Cayman client base also think Maples and Calder and Maples Finance for their Irish products – conferences help in that process.

17:30 I prepare the technical documentation to deal with the problem fund and send it out. I call my dinner appointment to push dinner back 1 hour. I call the CEO of Maples Finance for assurance that the authorised share capital issue could not affect funds we administer. I am assured it cannot. We have the leading proprietary registrar systems, which flag the remaining share capital. That is a relief.

19:00 I call home to London to speak to my wife and my two youngest boys, Matthew (5) and John David (4). I send emails to my sons, James (13) and Luke (10) who are at boarding school.

20:00 I am called on my direct dial by a potential local hire. I have been impressed by the quality of local lawyers in the new local growth areas of funds and debt. The established firms do, however, seem to have staff retention issues. Local salary rates for lawyers in these practice areas lag well behind English levels for no good reason, which cannot help. We try to be a little more enlightened on the remuneration front.

21:00 I meet my dinner companion at Shanahans. A work-related dinner but enjoyable nonetheless.

00:15 I return to the apartment, set the alarm for 4:15am to catch the early flight to Nice for the conference. I am looking forward to the weekend in London and fall asleep. I never have trouble sleeping.

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