IQ-EQ Brand Guidelines: SGG’s 2019 Rebrand, Astorg & a Network Built by Acquisition

A founder, a private equity backer and a new name.

IQ-EQ grew out of SGG, an investor services business founded by Serge Krancenblum, according to the private equity firm Astorg, which described him as the group’s chairman in a January 2022 announcement. Astorg first invested in the business in 2016, the same announcement says, and IQ-EQ’s own news releases describe the group as an Astorg portfolio company. The companies trading as IQ-EQ are held by IQ-EQ Group Holdings, a company incorporated in Luxembourg, according to the group’s legal notice.

Under Astorg, SGG grew by acquisition. In 2018 SGG Group completed its purchase of First Names Group after regulatory approval, Channel Eye reported, strengthening its reach in Jersey, Guernsey, the Isle of Man, Switzerland, Cyprus and Ireland. In February 2019 the same publication reported that SGG Group had made Krancenblum group executive chairman and named Mark Pesco, who had arrived with First Names Group, as group chief executive.

The new name followed in 2019. By May of that year Channel Eye was describing the firm’s “recent global rebrand” from SGG Group, which by then included Augentius, First Names Group and Moore Management; in Guernsey the new directors were to integrate the legacy Augentius and Moore Management teams. The group’s legal notice today lists IQ-EQ, FNTC and G10 as its trading names. The company explains the two halves of the name on its website: the IQ stands for technical, regulatory and operational expertise, and the EQ for “human partnership.”

Funds, private wealth and corporate structures.

IQ-EQ calls itself a global investor services group with deep expertise in private markets. Its website organises the work around fund services for private equity, venture capital, hybrid and evergreen funds; services for family offices and private clients, including foundation and trust administration; and debt, capital markets and corporate work such as special purpose vehicle management, aviation leasing support and collateralised loan obligation services. It also offers alternative investment fund manager services and portfolio monitoring and reporting.

Ireland shows how the model works. In May 2022 Asset Servicing Times reported that IQ-EQ had completed its purchase of Davy Global Fund Management, first announced in July 2021, after approval from the Central Bank of Ireland. The business became IQ-EQ Fund Management (Ireland), offering fund management, fund administration and corporate administration from Dublin and Shannon.

The United States followed a similar path. Astorg’s portfolio page lists IQ-EQ purchases including Constellation Advisers, Greyline Partners and JGM Fund Services, and in May 2025 Asset Servicing Times reported that IQ-EQ had completed the acquisition of South Watch, a fund administration, outsourced finance support and tax provider based in the US and the Cayman Islands, from its majority shareholder Everlane Equity Partners. IQ-EQ’s website now says South Watch has been rebranded to IQ-EQ, part of what it calls an enlarged business.

Compliance became a line of its own. Astorg also lists Laven Compliance in the UK, and ComplianceAsia and Lymon in Asia, among IQ-EQ’s acquisitions.

How fund administrators present themselves.

Fund administrators, trust companies and share registrars do much of their work out of sight. They keep the registers of who owns a company’s shares, run employee share plans, calculate fund values, act as trustees and file the paperwork that keeps funds and companies in good standing. Most people meet them only through a dividend statement, a voting form or a login page, so their identities have to work as hard on a plain document as on a home page.

The visual language of the category is restrained. Wordmarks tend towards navy, teal and purple rather than bright colours, often paired with a clean sans. Computershare goes further than most in making a colour part of its culture: it describes its ways of working as “Being Purple.” Others take on a parent’s mark; Link Group became MUFG Pension & Market Services after its Japanese buyer completed the takeover in May 2024.

The websites follow a familiar pattern. There is usually a country or office list — for the fund and trust firms, one that often runs across Jersey, Guernsey, Luxembourg, Ireland and the Caribbean — a row of investor and client portal logins, and separate pages for fund, corporate and private-client services. Because these businesses are regulated, the same sites carry lists of licences and regulators, from the Financial Conduct Authority in Britain to the authorities of the Channel Islands and the Cayman Islands, along with annual reports for those that are listed.

This guide sets out what can be checked about each firm — who founded it, who has owned it and what it has been called — and marks clearly what rests on the company’s own word. Several have changed hands or names in recent years, and those changes are given with their dates.

Continuation capital and an Asia-Pacific push.

Astorg kept the business rather than selling it. In January 2022 it announced the closing of an IQ-EQ Continuation Fund, backed by AlpInvest and Goldman Sachs Asset Management’s Vintage Funds, to acquire IQ-EQ from its earlier Astorg V fund, with members of the IQ-EQ leadership team also investing. Astorg said then that, through acquisitions and the growth of private assets and outsourcing, IQ-EQ had more than quintupled in size since its first investment.

The pace of deals rose from 2025. IQ-EQ says it completed and rebranded its purchase of AMAL Group, a loan servicing, corporate trust and agency provider in Australia and New Zealand, in October 2025. It announced the acquisition of Gordian Capital, a fund platform established in the Cayman Islands in 2004 and in Singapore in 2005 with offices in Singapore, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Melbourne, in July 2025, saying the deal had approval from the Monetary Authority of Singapore and Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission, and in June 2026 said it had completed the rebrand of the Gordian business to IQ-EQ across Asia-Pacific and the Middle East; the company lists its regulated fund platforms in Singapore, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Dubai, Luxembourg, Ireland, France and the UK. In May 2026 it completed the purchase of Zenith Global, a securitisation and structured finance specialist in Italy, after regulatory approvals, the company says; in the same announcement a Zenith executive said half of its clients were now from outside Italy, up from 30 per cent in 2017.

After the Zenith deal, IQ-EQ said it had more than 6,500 employees across 25 jurisdictions. Its published employee code of conduct, called “Our DNA,” sets out three values — Authentic, Bold and Collaborative — and a network of committees it calls CHESS supports charitable and socially responsible activities, the company says.

For a design guide, IQ-EQ shows how a name built from two abbreviations can absorb many acquired brands, as South Watch, AMAL and Gordian each became IQ-EQ. Compare Citco, a family-controlled administrator that says it grew organically, and Apex Group. For this guide we use a deep plum, a cool teal and a soft stone with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep IQ-EQ’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.