Meet some of the experienced practitioners bringing specialist knowledge, judgment and direct client support to Langham Hall's US business.
Staying close to the work
At industry events, Joe Watson is often taken for a business development professional. His answer is straightforward.
“I take that as a compliment. I'm close to the work itself, which is why I can still speak to the issues clients, fund counsel and other industry professionals are actually working through.”
The questions he is asked at those events are the same ones clients bring to the team once the work begins: how structure and strategy determine a fund's basis of accounting, how certain LPA provisions translate into the underlying calculations, or how other managers have approached something similar.
Watson, a Director in the US team, began his career in real estate audit before moving client-side into financial reporting at a fund manager. That experience eventually led him into fund administration, where he is able to work across multiple clients year-round rather than within a set engagement period. Each of those vantage points is useful in a different way, but his audit background is one clients regularly draw on.
"Staying close to the work is what lets us add real value, not just for our clients but for the industry professionals we work with as well."
Working through the accounting questions
Clients can be wary of an audit, but Watson's experience means he understands what the auditor is trying to establish. “An auditor's objective isn't to find fault; it's to gather sufficient evidence that the numbers comply with the relevant standards and reach an opinion from there.” Knowing how to work through those issues changes the nature of the conversation.
Several senior members of the US team have audit backgrounds, which makes them well suited to work through what the basis of accounting should be, which valuation methods are available and where the legal provisions and accounting treatment leave room for interpretation.
“The value is often in helping our clients connect the accounting, the audit process and the fund documents, and explain how those pieces work together in practice.”
That same dynamic shows up in the waterfall training Watson leads for lawyers in the industry. Fund counsel draft the provisions but do not always see how they resolve mathematically, while the accountants applying them do not always interpret the drafting the same way. Working through real examples together helps to close that gap before the language is finalized.
Drawing on more than one client
Fund managers who have not used an administrator before often ask Watson a version of the same question: “What do you do for your other clients?” It is a fair question, particularly for a manager whose finance team has a narrower frame of reference.
“A single finance team only knows what it's experienced directly. We've experienced it across the full spectrum of clients and structures we serve.”
When a client raises a question, Watson and the team can bring it to the broader management group, where several colleagues may have encountered a similar issue across another fund, structure or client situation. In some cases, that perspective points to a clear response; in other cases, the team will work through the facts together before going back to the client.
The responses come back from professionals running diverse funds and structures. As a result, the client benefits from the accumulated expertise of a wider group rather than relying on the knowledge of a single individual.
Answering in real time
Allen Feng, also a Director in the US team, has worked in fund administration since 2013. For him, knowledge is only valuable to a client if it is available when the question arises.
With the US team based in New York and Philadelphia, client questions can be addressed seamlessly throughout the working day, without delays that can come from multiple time zones or layers of handoffs.
“We operate as a true extension of a client's organization rather than a third-party entity. We service them with real-time experience and insight.”
This responsiveness matters most when an investor request is urgent. If an LP requests inception-to-date capital activity that the fund manager cannot readily extract, the answer has to come from the administrator quickly enough to be useful.
Advanced systems expand what can be produced on demand. Understanding what the investor is actually asking for still relies on the expertise of the people reviewing the request.
Taking ownership of the problem
For Jeff Kendall, a Manager in the US team, the test comes when a client request falls outside standard reporting requirements.
A recent engagement brought this to life. A real estate client preparing to launch a new fund needed tailored performance metrics that went beyond its standard reporting, on a compressed timetable. The team worked through the underlying data, aligned on the methodology and delivered a refined set of metrics the client could use with confidence in its investor marketing materials.
Looking ahead to the next decade, Kendall expects fund managers to ask for more than operational delivery.
“Clients will increasingly prioritize scalability, transparency and strategic partnership.”
Data integrity will sit closer to the center of the client experience, alongside informed guidance on system selection and data architecture.
Those capabilities will matter even more over the next ten years than they did over the last. They should extend what experienced people can do, rather than put greater distance between them and the client.
The person a manager meets at an industry event is the person who reads the LPA afterward.
