Highvern adds senior PE specialist

Highvern Fund Administrators has bolstered its senior private equity ranks through the addition of Mark Primrose.

Seven months after its full launch, the fund administration boutique hired Primrose as head of client accounting and associate director in Jersey.

Primrose, a certified chartered accountant, began his career at KPMG in 2005, leaving the consultancy in 2009 to work on fund accounting in-house for Apax Partners (2009-2011). In the succeeding years he has held various roles at SG Hambros and Moore Management, where he was most recently employed.

For Highvern, the appointment of Primrose follows the hire of compliance director Natalie Jelley in April to help tackle “increasingly demanding” regulations. Aidan O’Flanagan, the former regulator who is head of funds at the firm, said this week several senior hires will be announced within the next month.

Earlier this year, The Drawdown published an investigation into how the fund administration space is being transformed by consolidation and technological innovation. Highvern, a boutique player launched with the aim to “disrupt” the space, signed a deal in March to use AltaReturn’s software. The resulting platform, the firm explained at the time, would seek to become an “extension” of a GP’s back-office by providing integrated access to fund accounting, a CRM system and an investor portal.