The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

A Bahamian investment manager says its core business and long-term operations will not be impacted by court-supervised liquidation of its Cayman fund portfolio as it pledged “full-co-operation” to ensure an “orderly conclusion” to the winding-up.

Holdun Family Office, which is located at the Albany Financial Centre, told Tribune Business via a series of written replies to this newspaper’s questions that it had elected to place the Holt Funds into liquidation, which is being handled by the KPMG accounting firm, in a bid to give investors the benefit of “an independent, regulated, transparent process” for returning investor monies now overseen by the Grand Court of the Cayman Islands.

The winding-up, which emerged when the KPMG liquidators sought Chapter 15 recognition in the US from the Delaware Bankruptcy Court, was said to have been sparked by fall-out from the COVID-19 pandemic that resulted in “market dislocation” that occurred in late 2022 and carried through into 2023. Liquidity pressures arose after investments failed or did not deliver the forecast returns, which resulted in Holt Funds suspending redemptions - requests by investors for return of their funds.

Holdun Family Office, whose core business is the provision of wealth management, advisory and family office services to private clients, said liquidation emerged as “the strongest framework for protecting” Holt Funds investors after restructuring efforts - which spanned three years lasting into 2025 - ultimately proved unsuccessful in resolving the liquidity concerns and sums owed by counterparties the portfolio had invested in.

Asserting that it has fully co-operated with the liquidators, and provided all necessary documents and requested information, Holdun Family Office, whose chief executive is Brendan Holt Dunn, declined to provide dollar figures for both the amount of investor money presently tied-up in the Holt Funds or the value and number of redemption requests received prior to voluntary liquidation - referring this newspaper to KPMG.

And it also confirmed that the Holt Funds wind-up is separate from, and not connected to, the Bahamas-based liquidation of its $113m Holdun Innovation and Technology Fund, which was placed under the Supreme Court’s oversight last year.

John Henry and Timothy Womack, the two KPMG Cayman liquidators, in papers filed with the Delaware Bankruptcy Court on May 21, 2026, revealed that Holt Funds were originally created and domiciled in The Bahamas as the Holdun Income Fund. The latter was registered with the Securities Commission of The Bahamas as a special mandate alternative regulator test fund or SMART fund.

The duo added that Holdun Family Office informed them it ultimately decided to relocate the Holdun Income Fund to the Cayman Islands “to enhance jurisdictional credibility, support future capital raising efforts and operate within a more robust regulatory and governance framework”. The original fund became part of a wider ‘family of funds’ structure, where it was just one of several funds offering various strategies to suit different investors’ appetites.

Holt Funds was thus created as a segregated accounts company or SAC - a structure often employed by the financial services industry to ensure that liabilities, or problems, with one particular fund do not infect or impact any others. Holdun Income Fund was used “to migrate investor interests” from The Bahamas to the Cayman Islands “through a redemption process”, thereafter focusing on “risk-adjusted rates of return” from commercial real estate and fixed income securities investments.

Other investment funds in the Holt Funds structure were focused on US commercial real estate investments for non-Americans, especially in “properties zoned and built out for use in the medical drug detoxification and rehabilitation sector”, plus achieving “long-term capital growth by monetising trading and arbitrage opportunities in digital currencies and related instruments, markets and derivatives through the deployment of multiple trading strategies”.

The KPMG liquidators revealed that two of the four Holt Funds’ sub-funds were placed into a court-supervised restructuring process in the Cayman Islands in December 2023, with FTI Consulting appointed to lead the process.

“The restructuring occurred due to significant liquidity pressures arising from COVID-19 and the resulting volatility in interest rates,” the liquidators said. “Rising interest rates suppressed liquidity and valuation levels associated with the segregated portfolios' downstream assets, primarily commercial real estate.

“During this time, investors increased their withdrawal requests while the debtor suffered from consistent restrictions on liquidity. Ultimately, redemptions were suspended. Despite the efforts of the restructuring officers expended for most of 2024, a viable restructuring proposal never materialised, and the Cayman Court dismissed the restructuring officers. The debtor contacted KPMG in early 2025 regarding a potential winding up, and eventually retained KPMG in October 2025.”

The Holt Funds’ directors passed a written resolution to place the structure into voluntary liquidation, and appoint KPMG to oversee the wind-up, on January 30, 2026. Court supervised liquidation followed on March 6 this year, then the Chapter 15 recognition application in the US.

Explaining why they are seeking US recognition, the KPMG duo revealed: “Since their appointment as joint voluntary liquidators earlier this year, the joint official liquidators have taken various steps to obtain books and records, and have contacted numerous stakeholders and service providers to acquire a comprehensive understanding of the debtor's structure, assets and liabilities.

“However, in some circumstances, responses to the joint official liquidators' inquiries have to-date been slow, and limited documentation and information have been provided, including from entities and individuals in the US who are responsible for the investments of the debtor's segregated portfolios.”

Holdun Family Office, a fifth-generation family office that traces its roots back to the late Sir Herbert Samuel Holt, a Canadian industrialist and financier who, in 1908, became the Royal Bank of Canada’s (RBC) president and chief executive, told Tribune Business that the reference to “slow responses” did not involve itself but, rather, the counterparties with whom the Holt Funds had invested monies and other entities that had assisted this process.

“Holdun Family Office has co-operated fully with the joint official liquidators from day one - producing documents on request, responding to information requests, attending meetings and making people available,” it told Tribune Business. “We have provided the joint official liquidators with the books, records and historic net asset value (NAV) data they have requested and continue to do so.

“Any commentary by the joint official liquidators about information-gathering challenges relates to the wider universe of third-party counterparties the joint official liquidators must engage with in a liquidation of this kind: Sub-managers, custodians, brokers, underlying investee entities and other external parties across multiple jurisdictions.”

Explaining what led to the Cayman liquidation, the Bahamian fund manager said: “The portfolios were affected by the broader market dislocation of late 2022 and 2023. For one portfolio, exposure to a digital-asset counterparty that failed in November 2022 was the principal driver, and led to the formal suspension of that portfolio on December 16, 2022.”

That November 2022 date coincides with when Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX crypto exchange collapsed, but Holdun Family Office did not identify whether it or another entity affected by those events was the “counterparty”.

“For another portfolio, illiquidity in certain underlying credit positions resulted in a redemption gate in early January 2023 and a formal suspension on February 9, 2023,” it added. “Following the 2022–2023 suspensions, the directors and the investment manager worked through 2023, 2024 and into 2025 to pursue orderly realisations and restructuring.”

This involved “side-pocketing illiquid positions, working with underlying counterparties on repayment plans, and exploring continuation routes that would preserve value for shareholders”. However, these efforts ultimately proved fruitless.

“When it became clear that the strongest framework for protecting investors going forward was independent, court-supervised oversight, the Holt Funds directors took the proactive decision to place the SPC (segregated portfolio company) into voluntary liquidation and to propose KPMG as joint official liquidators,” Holdun Family Office said. “That decision was taken for the benefit of investors - to give them an independent, regulated, transparent process rather than a private workout….

“The Holt Funds directors are the ones who proposed KPMG's appointment as joint official liquidators precisely because we believed an independent, well-resourced and court-supervised process was the right path forward for investors.

“Since their appointment, Holdun has provided documentation requested, responded to information requests, attended scheduled meetings, filed proofs of debt where appropriate, and made personnel available to the joint official liquidators. We have a constructive working relationship with the KPMG team and intend to continue on that basis until the liquidation concludes.”

Holdun Family Office also sought to reassure that the Holt Funds’ liquidation will have no impact on its future prospects or core business. “Holdun Family Office is a long-established multi-family office serving private clients across multiple jurisdictions,” it said.

“The voluntary liquidation of Holt Funds SPC, a vehicle for which Holdun was previously investment manager, does not change the family office's core business of providing wealth management, advisory and administrative services to its client families.

“Holdun continues to operate, continues to serve its clients and remains focused on the long-term. We are committed to seeing the Holt Funds liquidation through to an orderly conclusion alongside the joint official liquidators.”