Funds Hub
Money managers under the microscope
UCITS IV Everyone
It is early days at the Reuters fund summit in Luxembourg, but already a few themes are building. For one thing, no one seems to be too negative about the investment climate.
For the most part, however, the attendees are focused on how the industry will recuperate from the battering it has suffered during the financial crisis. Again, there appears to be a degree of optimism. Most of the talk is about UCITS IV, which is fundspeak for a new kind of pan-European fund that is easier to distribute.
Reuters reporters head for the engine room
Reuters will be holding a European funds summit in Luxembourg this week, piggy-backing on the ALFI spring conference. It’s a useful opportunity to take stock of a startling couple of years for the industry, as well as looking ahead to the shape of the sector for the years to come.
We’ll be speaking to a host of senior industry players from both sides of the fence, from the top performing fund managers to the people that make the industry tick; Luxembourg got a jump on the rest of the fund market by being the first to leap on the UCITS train back in 1988 and now houses much of the sector’s administrative machinery as it becomes truly cross-border.
Apples, pears and Ucits
Ucits funds have undoubtedly benefited from the uncertainty surrounding the AIFM directive.
A number of hedge funds have opted to launch products in the Ucits format — automatically avoiding the directive, which focuses on non-Ucits funds — rather than wait and see how the long-running political battle plays out.
Onshoring the hedge fund industry
Hedge fund executives are increasingly talking about the “onshoring” of the industry — new funds being domiciled in Luxembourg rather than Cayman, their traditional home — and our story today about RCM shows more and more are putting it into practice.
The firm, which has less than $200 mln in hedge fund assets, hopes to raise at least $100 mln with two new funds, including a Luxembourg-domiciled Ucits equity fund.
from Global Investing:
Reuters Funds Summit: Madoff, the silent presence
Master-fraudster Bernie Madoff is the invisible guest at an annual fund fest in Luxembourg, the European capital for fund administration.
Even though the former Nasdaq chairman is under arrest thousands of miles away from this discreet 
financial centre nestled between Belgium, France and Germany, his presence was omnipresent. Fund managers just can't stop mentioning him.
Reuters Fund Summit: Will hedge fund regulation open the door to retail investors?
By Huw Jones
Hedge funds are nothing if not optimistic – they have to be in the current climate.
While holed up in an English country resort last weekend, finance ministers and central bankers from the G20 group of countries agreed that the $1.4 trillion hedge funds sector should be made to register, be directly supervised and provide information about their holdings to regulators who track risk in markets.
