The jobs of the 145 staff that work in the Bermuda office of Hemisphere Group, which was last week sold to a US company, are safe, according to management.

In fact the business could be expanding with the possibility of new posts opening up in the Bermuda of the hedge fund administration services company.

The company, which is based in Church Street was sold by Mutual Risk Management to BISYS Group for $110 million last week.

"We bought the firm and want to keep it exactly as it is," Lynn Mangum, chairman and chief executive officer of BISYS, told The Royal Gazette. "And we expect the company to continue in the way that it is presently run."

When asked if there would be any job losses, he said that this was not part of the company's plans "at all".

Tom Healy, chief executive officer of Hemisphere confirmed yesterday that there would be no lay-offs.

"BISYS acquired Hemisphere for its hedge fund services and Hemisphere will become the alternative services platform within BISYS" said Mr. Healy.

"We fully expect Hemisphere to continue business as usual. But obviously we will have the added value of a large and financially stable company behind us and we will be able to leverage off their expertise."

And Mr. Healy pointed out that Hemisphere had just completed a record year in 2001 and that business in the hedge fund world was doing very well.

He added : "2001 was a bad year for investments, but a good year for hedge funds and a service provider like us benefits from that."

He said that there had been "significant" growth in asset funds and as they collected fees based on assets they did well. Mr. Healy also said that there had also been a lot of new product launches through the year.

He added: "We are very excited about the prospect of working with BISYS. They are already large in the fund services business and already do a lot of work with 401K (US pensions) services. Hemisphere is the third leg of the stool."

Set up in 1981, Hemisphere was originally a provider of corporate administrative and accounting services for international business in Bermuda, Cayman and British Virgin Islands.

But the company changed tack in 1990 and is now exclusively is a service provider for hedge funds. World-wide the company has over 300 staff with 95 in Dublin and a further 65 in Boston.

When asked if there may be any job losses in Hemisphere, Mr. Healy said: "Absolutely not. If anything we would expect it to go the other way and have to hire more staff. This move would give us the opportunity to grow further."

Hemisphere was sold last week by its former owners, beleaguered Bermuda's Mutual Risk Management.

Last month Mutual Risk announced that as a bid to service the company's debt, it had put its fund administration company Hemisphere Management up on the sales block with anticipated proceeds of $100 million.

There had been speculation that it was to be sold locally, but in the end it went to the BISYS Group, Inc., a leading provider of outsourcing services to the financial services sector.

Mutual Risks said it was to report a gain on the sale of approximately $100 million after-tax.

An announcement from Mutual Risk said: "The proceeds of the sale will be used to repay indebtedness and the company's banks and debenture holders have approved the transaction."

The hedge fund market globally currently has more than $500 billion in assets under management, and is expected to have approximately $1.7 trillion in assets by 2008, a fact which attracted BISYS to the Bermuda group.

Hemisphere provides an extensive range of outsourcing services, including fund administration, record keeping, regulatory and tax services, and corporate secretary and director services and currently services funds with approximately $50 billion in assets under management from service centres not only in Bermuda but also, Boston, and Dublin, Ireland.

Additional information on the new owners of Hemisphere is available at www.bisys.com.