aifmd

Introduction

The Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive (AIFMD) is now a fact. Like death and taxes, it is here. Only time will disclose whether its provisions will bear lightly on alternative managers, or slump heavily on all that they do, crushing the energy and creativity on which progress in investing depends. What is worrying is the palpable relief that the Directive is not more hostile to alternative investing than it is. Among lobbyists, there is even a measure of self-congratulation at the success of their campaign to emasculate its grandest ambitions.

Categorised: Practicalities

Tags:

Who is affected by AIFMD?

The fact that the Directive captures every fund that is not regulated under the UCITS regime surprised some. There are exemptions of various kinds, but every manager active in Europe has had to respond in some way to the coming of the AIFMD.

Categorised: Practicalities

Tags:

What do depositaries do

The core responsibilities of a depositary to an AIF are to custody the assets, monitor the cash flows and oversee its compliance with the stated objective of the fund, on pain of having to make good any losses which occur. But there are several variations of the basic model.

Categorised: Practicalities

Tags:

Prime brokers lose an argument

Investment bankers do not expect to lose arguments to anyone, so it took robust and lengthy negotiations before the prime brokers conceded that they would have to indemnify custodian banks against the losses of assets in their care.

Categorised: History

Tags:

Depositary “lite” looks like a temporary fix

Hedge fund managers exasperated by the cost and operational disruption of appointing an AIFMD depositary saw depositary “lite” as offering the ideal combination of compliance and the status quo. But expectations of its durability as a solution to AIFMD are not high.

Categorised: Solutions

Tags:

Reverse solicitation is the riskiest option

If they are not prepared to comply with the obligations of the AIFMD, managers based outside the European Union are better advised to avoid Europe altogether than to rely on the legal no man’s land of reverse solicitation

Categorised: Solutions

Tags:

BNP Paribas Securities Services

The bank is drawing on long experience of fulfilling depositary duties in its home markets to convince regulators and clients that it knows exactly what to do when AIFMD compliance becomes a reality on 22 July 2014.

Categorised: Banks

Tags:

Aligning UCITS funds with AIFMD

International compliance consultants Cordium are offering an ingenious regulatory hosting solution to the AIFMD conundrum for fund managers nervous about opting for full compliance immediately. Yet it is not at all novel. It has operated successfully since 2007 under MiFID, another European directive which at its launch, set what appeared to be onerous regulatory reporting obligations.

Categorised: Future

Tags:

Talk of AIFMs as a global brand is premature

Dealing with disaster by transforming it into opportunity is an old adage, but talk of AIFMs repeating the success of UCITS funds as a global brand is more than premature. Even UCITS funds are still primarily a European domestic phenomenon.

Categorised: Future

Tags:

Not as bad as expected

The hysteria which greeted the first draft of the AIFMD in 2009 is hard to recapture now. This is partly because AIFMD has grown wearily familiar, but also reflects a growing acceptance that its measures on remuneration, regulatory reporting and depositary liability do not, after all, presage the end of business as we know it.

Categorised: History

Tags:

Pages