Financial services firm Estera last night celebrated its independence with a party at the Bermuda National Gallery in Hamilton.

But the company — which was Appleby Fiduciary Services until a management buyout at the start of the year — said it would continue to work with its former parent firm.

Estera Bermuda managing director Rory Gorman said: “We’re now a separate entity worldwide, so we’re having a launch party locally and in a week’s time we’ll have a similar event in New York, which will include the Caymans and British Virgin Islands offices.”

The global corporate, trust, funds and accounting services company employs around 350 staff across ten jurisdictions.

The new name for the company, which separated from its parent law firm last December, was inspired by a staff competition.

Mr Gorman said the split was “to create an independent fiduciary business”.

He added: “It makes sense — it’s important to ensure that you have the right organisation. Essentially, the law firm wants to focus on legal work and we want to focus on fiduciary business and having them under the same umbrella for the long term, strategically is not the best way to do it.”

Client director Janita Burke, a lawyer who moved over to Estera from Appleby, said: “We still share a number of clients and work with Appleby to supply the services the clients require.”

The new company has had to hire professionals in areas like IT, human resources and compliance that were previously shared with Appleby.

Mr Gorman said: “We hope to grow both organically and inorganically through our client base who add companies and trusts that expand and perhaps growing through acquisitions of books of business.”