Carolon's 2016: A Year of Growth and Opportunity

As Margaret Thatcher famously said, “you do not achieve anything without trouble, ever.”

Early in the New Year we are taking stock as a team and reviewing 2016 to reflect on the opportunities we were granted, the challenges we faced and the lessons we learned.

As Margaret Thatcher famously said, “you do not achieve anything without trouble, ever.”

Let’s start with the successes:

  • We officially announced a partnership with Thomson Horstmann & Bryant, Inc. to launch a UCITS fund focused on U.S. micro-cap equities. The formal launch of the fund is near.
  • We signed an agreement with a US-based $50 billion AUM multi-boutique asset manager to launch two UCITS funds in early 2017
  • Our U.S.-based marketing and branding business has expanded its client base to eight firms, which include private equity groups, investment banks and alternative asset managers
  • We worked with a U.S. manager to raise capital and expand the firm’s profile in Europe for their mid-life aviation fund
  • We have an ongoing engagement with a $50+ billion AUM European manager to distribute three of their funds which have already launched
  • We extended our team by one when Kristin Steele joined us as our Vice President, US Head of Client Services. Kristin has been a great addition to the team, leading the charge in identifying opportunities on behalf of our U.S.-based marketing clients.

The challenges we faced were a mix of surprises and expected hurdles for a growing company:

  • The beginning of 2016 was difficult as equity markets around the world entered a period of vast uncertainty and chaos. While things settled down by early in the second quarter, the start to the year was a slow one.
  • As with most of the world, we were a bit surprised by the BREXIT vote. Thankfully, while the result caused some short-term anxiety, it did not create an impediment to our growth.
  • While successes are fun to celebrate, they require a full team to capitalize on the opportunities. In 2016, we quickly realized the need to hire additional employees in Europe and potentially the U.S. We are busy with our plans to add more key team members in 2017.

The lessons we learned were numerous:

  • Client service cannot be – and will never be – second to new business efforts
  • Tenacity and persistence pay off
  • We have a highly valuable platform and our model works
  • Rapid growth is daunting!
  • Our clients are made up of incredible people and we are extremely fortunate to have them as partners. Our success is 100% dependent on their success.

As a young company, we are still climbing our mountain and we have a lot of terrain to cover. With the team we have in place and our personnel expansion plans, we are filled with optimism.


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