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Jersey firm picks ex-JP Morgan head to lead Nairobi wealth unit

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Participants during an investor networking conference in Nairobi in 2016. PHOTO | DIANA NGILA | NMG

Jersey-based wealth management firm Ocorian has opened a Nairobi office as it seeks to tap new East Africa clients.

The firm specialising in wealth management for the rich has tapped Harvard-trained Ugandan citizen Andrew Musoke to head its regional headquarters.

Mr Musoke, an ex -JP Morgan Chase executive, will be the firm’s business development director based in Nairobi.

“In his role as Business Development Director, Musoke will be responsible for promoting the services of Ocorian to businesses and high-net-worth individuals in a region covering primarily Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania and Ethiopia,” announced the firm in a statement.

According to Richard Arlove, Ocorian regional CEO for Africa, the Middle East and Asia, the company’s local expansion is aimed at “getting closer” to the firm’s existing clients in the region”.

Jersey, a famed offshore tax haven, a label it strongly disputes, is one of three island territories off the coast of Great Britain that are self-governing possessions of the British Crown. The others are the Bailiwick of Guernsey and the Isle of Man. Assets under administration on the Channel Island grew by more than 17 percent in the year to June 2017, according to research conducted by research consultancy Europe Economics with assets growing from £209 billion (Sh27.3 trillion) at the end of June 2016 to £246 billion (about Sh32.2 trillion) a year later.

In 2017, Kenya struck a deal with the Jersey government for repatriation of more than Sh380 million it confiscated from a company associated with former Kenya Power managing director Samuel Gichuru.

The cash was at the centre of a long-running money-laundering suit in the English Channel Island.

The deal paved the way for handing over of the money to the Treasury nearly two years after Mr Gichuru’s firm, Windward Trading Limited, pleaded guilty to money laundering in the British Crown dependency and surrendered the assets.

Wealthy Kenyan investors have stepped up investments outside the country with their target being foreign-backed mutual funds.