Amid all the doom and gloom of the recession and job losses one Bermuda-based fund administrator is actually taking on new staff and business.Butterfield Fulcrum Group (BFG), which was acquired by Glenn Henderson and Tim Calveley, partnered by private-equity form BV Investment Partners in May last year, has grown from strength to strength since and is currently in the process of hiring 12 new employees having signed up 36 new clients already this month.The company has taken advantage of the demise of Citi Hedge Fund Services, Citco Fund Services and CACEIS Investor Services (Bermuda) Ltd, who have all cut jobs in Bermuda over the past year, recruiting from the latter two in recent weeks.And despite predicting a tough year ahead for the Island, Mr Calveley, who is a principal shareholder with BFG and CEO of sister company FORS, is still bullish on the future of Bermuda.Reflecting on the first year in business, Mr Calveley said: “It’s been an interesting time and overall great for us.“Really when we took over the business we knew the operation very well because we used to run it before.“We knew from day one the changes we needed to make.“Since then we have been making sure we had a full service product offering so we can really compete with the other Tier 1 fund administrators.“We brought in some new people that used to work with us it took us four to five months to get that right but by the end of the summer we had a huge improvement from what was there before.”Focusing on getting the BFG’s story about the new management out there, the company’s marketing efforts really paid off in the fourth quarter of 2011 when it started to win a lot of new business and clients which has continued into the first quarter of this year.“Overall we’re really happy, our investors are happy and hopefully our staff are happy with how everything has progressed from where we were a year ago,” he said.“And that has trickled down to the operation here we are definitely very committed to Bermuda with a combined staff of 40 between FORS (the family offices and trusts business) and BFG (the hedge fund administration side).”In Bermuda the company has just taken on two new staff with another 10 set to come on board soon. Fifty percent of its workforce on the Island is Bermudian with a three-month summer internship programme now in its second year seeking to find the best talent from students studying finance or accounting at university or college.Globally BFG has 500 employees in 12 offices in 10 countries worldwide with a client base of around 200 and 800 funds totalling more than $100 billion in assets under administration.“Bermuda is a very significant part of that and obviously we are completely bucking the trend of fund administrators on the Island given the demise of Citi, Citco and CACEIS, which has been great for us,” he said.“As a result there is a lot more talent available out there which we have been picking up as well as new clients.“Quite a lot of those administrators had some very significant hedge fund clients who were serviced out of Bermuda and many of them don’t want to move and to be serviced elsewhere because they are established here.“We have definitely picked up some business from other administrators and we are actively looking for other funds as well to administer.”Admitting that 2011 was a tough year for the hedge fund industry as a whole, Mr Calveley said there would two key driving forces in the next 12 months an increased and continued allocation from pension funds and endowments in hedge funds due to low yields in order to reach their targets, with a lot never having done so before. Furthermore, he foresees a return to the previous hedge fund threshold of $2.6 trillion.Secondly Mr Calveley said that the impact of certain US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) rulings had forced many banks to spin off their proprietary trading desks which was providing more opportunities in the hedge fund space.“It is certainly a very competitive business,” he said. “We are always up against the other big players, but we have carved a bit of niche for ourselves as at handling big complex funds.“We are definitely trying to exploit that to best effect being specialists in that field.”While business has been buoyant, so has hiring, with a successful meeting with the Department of Immigration last week and a number of work permits swiftly approved and Mr Calveley said the key was to keep them in the loop at all times to smooth the whole process.Following the 15 to 20 job cuts made by Citco Fund Services and the 105 positions moved out of Bermuda by Citigroup at the tail end of last year, Mr Calveley believes that BFG will soon be the biggest fund administrator left on the Island and he intends to milk that for all it’s worth with a focus on keeping the client happy and servicing their needs, with a number of clients’ funds in South America, for example, serviced in the Cayman Islands.Acknowledging that while the financial crisis in Europe and its potential knock-on effect on the US could have a significantly negative impact on businesses across the world, Mr Calveley reckons that his company is in a good position both financially and staff wise to withstand any possible downturn.He also sees a good opportunity for Bermuda to attract investment funds and managers, and high net worth individuals provided they were safe in the knowledge they knew they could stay on the Island for a significant period of time, and that Government was moving in the right direction in terms of seeking that kind of business.“We are absolutely focused on growing the business,” he said. “We are definitely looking at trying to concentrate our efforts on the larger clients and wins by offering the full front, middle and back office service.”For more information about the Butterfield Fulcrum Group internship contact 299-3882 or email Resumes-BER[AT]bfgl.com