Alter Domus acquires French rival

• Fund administration firm Alter Domus acquired French rival Vigel & Associés. No financial details of the transaction were disclosed. Vigel specializes in providing accounting, tax compliance and administration services principally for real estate firms but also for private equity clients, according to a statement.

• Fund administrator PEF Services added two senior staffers to its operations management team. Delphine Jones joins from Prudential Capital Group, a mid-market lender, where she was chief financial officer. Caryn Siminoff joins from Citi Hedge Fund Services where she oversaw reporting, investor allocations and financial statement production for hedge, fund-of-funds, and hybrid structures.

• Following regulatory approvals, private equity firm Electra Partners has completed the purchase of Ogier Fiduciary Services, the fiduciary services division of Ogier Group, for £180 million (€225 million; $306 million).

• Arkk Solutions, a provider of regulatory reporting software, launched an XML reporting tool for the Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive (AIFMD) which takes effect next month. Arkk’s software has a conversion engine that uses an Excel template of the information required by the directive and converts it to XML for submission to a GP’s local authority.

• Investment bank Moelis & Company established a private funds advisory business which will provide capital raising, secondary and other independent advisory services to GPs and LPs. Dave Brown, Patrick Dunleavy, Christopher Kirsten and Zaid Abdul-Aleem will lead the business line having left from investment bank Greenhill & Co.’s placement agent team.

• Fund services firm Vistra is expanding its AIFMD depositary services in The Netherlands. Peter Soesbeek joins Vistra as a director from BNP Paribas to lead the expansion. The AIFMD requires a depositary to act as an investor safeguard responsible for protecting funds' financial assets, monitoring cash flows and ensuring a GP complies with its own governing documents.

• Tax and accounting firm EisnerAmper launched a compliance and regulatory team. The new unit will be led by Gary Swiman and Carmine Angone, both of whom join from regulatory consultants C&A Consulting.

• Private equity fund administrator Ipes hired Mark Coppin as operations director based in the UK. Coppin joined Ipes from Langham Hall where he was in charge of the reporting team, advising private equity funds, venture funds and fund of funds.

• Merchant bank Tower Gate Capital has applied for regulatory approval for an AIFMD delegation license. The license would allow Tower Gate to offer fund management services to third party funds and act as an outsourced management entity under the directive.