BNP buys Credit Suisse’s fund admin arm

• Accounting firm Richey May & Co has expanded its alternative investment division by adding three hires. Daniel O’Connor joins as an audit partner, Stephen Vlasak as an audit senior manager and director of business development and Jonathan Sharon joined Richey May as a tax director. All three join from audit and accounting firm Rothstein Kass, which was recently purchased by KPMG.

• Fund administration firm Ipes has been authorized to provide depositary services for alternative investment funds in Guernsey. GPs based on the island looking to market in certain countries in Europe require a depositary under Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive (AIFMD) regulations.

• Marc Lim has joined tax advisory firm WTAS as a managing director in the commercial and alternative investment funds practices in the San Francisco office. Prior to joining WTAS, Lim spent nine years as a tax practitioner in Japan and was a partner at Zeirishi-Hojin PricewaterhouseCoopers in Tokyo.

• Evercore, the investment bank, hired Rodney Reid as a managing director for the firm’s Private Capital Advisory business. Reid, who joins in November, will initially be based in Evercore’s London office, before relocating to New York. He will focus on advising institutional investors and private equity shops on secondary transactions. Reid was most recently head of Europe, the Middle East and Africa for UBS’ secondary advisory unit.

• Custodian and depositary bank BNP Paribas Securities Services appointed Nick Jenkins as head of technical for trustee and depositary services in the UK. Jenkins joins from Citi where he was head of fiduciary oversight and research. At BNP Paribas he will work with fund managers to help them manage regulatory change, with a particular focus on the AIFMD.

• BNP Paribas Securities Services also agreed to buy the fund administration arm of Credit Suisse creating a business with combined alternative assets under administration of $231 billion. The transaction is expected to close in the first half of 2015. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

• Joseph Coote and Mike Darland have joined professional services firm Alvarez & Marsal as a managing director and senior director, respectively, within the firm’s private equity performance improvement practice. Both men will be based in Boston. Coote joins from Hitachi Consulting where he worked as senior vice president. Darland was previously a director with Deloitte Corporate Restructuring.

• Jamieson Corporate Finance, the management advisory firm, has expanded into Europe by offering its services in Spain. The new venture Jamieson & Basabe will be led by José Basabe, who will be responsible for sourcing and executing mandates in the Spanish market. Prior to this, Basabe spent eight years with ABN AMRO Capital as co-head of the bank’s Spanish private equity team.