Lipper is to substantially grow its overseas operations this year, particularly in Asia. Eric Almquist, coo, revealed that Lipper is to ramp up its staff in its Bangkok data center from 65 at the start of 2006 to about 150 by year-end. "International funds want to compare how they allocate their assets and compete in relation to their [local] competition," said Almquist. "And other fund firms looking to go into countries would like to know who their competition will be." Currently, Lipper's main international fund product, Hindsight, provides data for 23 countries. By the end of the year that figure should be close to 30.

Canada is launching this month, while New Zealand, Israel, Algeria, Tunisia and the Persian Gulf states are all planned to be incorporated into the platform in the coming months. Lipper also to start building a database of South American funds.

This year's expansion began with Lipper including data for Belgium and The Netherlands. The company started covering Australia at the end of 2005 and Indonesia, coverage of which was previously outsourced, in August.

Almquist said that the hires in Bangkok ­ which will bring all Asia and Australasia data analysis and product development in-house ­ will establish the site as one of Lipper's three key worldwide operations centers. The other two are in the English city of Macclesfield and Lipper headquarters in Denver.