J.P. Morgan has made an equity investment in Arcesium, the post-trade technology and professional services firm launched by hedge fund D.E. Shaw in 2015 and later spun out as a standalone entity.
Details of J.P. Morgan’s investment, including the amount, were not disclosed. But in a statement issued Friday, Arcesium describes it as serving “to deepen” its strategic partnership with the bank, including J.P. Morgan’s securities services business which provides independent fund administration and outsourcing to alternative fund managers, asset managers and asset owners.
Arcesium, created through D.E. Shaw’s innovation incubator, now supports more than $150 billion in assets and employs more than 850 people in offices in New York City and India. Blackstone Alternative Asset Management provided equity backing when Arcesium was launched and became the firm’s second client.
Arcesium announced about a year ago that four parts of its tech platform would be offered as standalone products for alts managers, including financial data stack tools, reconciliation, swaps management and a treasury suite, as reported.
Arcesium CEO Gaurva Suri describes J.P. Morgan as an “important client and partner.” The firms will work together “to bring joint solutions to market,” Suri says.
For J.P. Morgan, the investment “underscores [its] continued focus in the alternatives segment,” says the bank’s global head of securities services, Teresa Heitsenrether. Working with Arcesium, J.P. Morgan has been able to provide its alternative asset manager clients with solutions to their “most complex operations and data management challenges,” Heitsenrether says.