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The move builds on connections between the Gulf and the subsidiary”s existing APAC base.
Investor services group IQ-EQ said yesterday that
its subsidiary Gordian Capital has achieved regulatory approval
to expand its institutional cross-border fund platform and fund
solutions offering into Dubai. Gordian has also been granted
an endorsement to its licence to use a fund platform.
The offering will be handled via Gordian’s new office at the
Dubai International Financial Centre.
Gordian has built a “corridor” between its established
Asia-Pacific base and the Gulf, IQ-EQ said, using a metaphor that
has been employed by banks, wealth managers and others to
describe trade and financial links, as noted in
this article.
Gordian, which manages $22 billion, is Asia’s “first and
largest institutional cross-border fund platform and fund
solutions provider,” with offices in Singapore, Tokyo, Hong
Kong, Shanghai and Melbourne, IQ-EQ said.
Services that can be offered within or from the DIFC include
managing a collective investment fund; advising on financial
products; arranging custody; arranging deals in investments; and
managing assets.
When IQ-EQ acquired Gordian in July 2025, it enabled the group to
offer regulated market entry into APAC on top of its existing
regulated fund platforms in France, Luxembourg, Ireland and the
UK. Since 2005, Gordian has launched over 115 funds across both
private and public strategies. Its clients include global
institutional asset managers, multi-strategy platforms, family
offices, hedge funds and corporates across private equity, real
estate, venture capital, infrastructure, hedge and long-only
strategies.
“When our clients go cross-border, regionally and/or globally, it
can have its challenges – in terms of speed to market and cost as
well as meeting rigorous initial and ongoing operational and
regulatory standards,” Mark Voumard, Gordian founder and managing
director and head of fund platform and solutions, Asia and Middle
East at IQ-EQ, said. “Leveraging Gordian’s 20 years’ experience
in APAC, and now as part of the global IQ-EQ group, we can
provide a highly-regulated market-entry pathway and
infrastructure for institutional GPs and managers seeking to
establish a regulated presence in DIFC.”
Such corridors can help shape businesses’ strategy on where to
deploy people and other resources, for example hiring bankers
fluent in local languages and with specific experience to work in
one end of a corridor, perhaps sometimes swapping with a
colleague to gain experience in the other end. Private banking
remains, in some ways, a career that involves travel and a
willingness to move around.