Browsing: UCITs

Liquidity vanishes when you need it most. That isn’t an especially original observation. It’s like saying that the exit doors are always jammed precisely when you need a quick exit quickly. Amin Rajan gives us a forceful statement of this point inspired by the “current travails at Woodford Asset Management.”Read More

On June 2, 2016 the EC issued a consultation document of interest to the many alpha seekers who would like to market their funds in one or more of the countries of the Eurozone. In a sense, its interest is much broader than that, because it fits into a veryRead More

If a hedge fund manager accustomed to a less regulated system (and its illiquidity at both ends) has on the blackboard a liquid product, it needs to “evaluate whether [its] strategy is suitable for a UCITS or an AMF format, and whether it can maintain an investment portfolio with sufficient liquid assets to meet the stringent liquidity requirements that exist” under those regimes, the new guide cautions.Read More

What does the road to passport status look like for the US, regarding Europe's AIFMD? It looks rocky, and ESMA seems disinclined to draw a legible map. Instead it offers ambiguity and links to further ambiguity in the footnotes of its report.Read More

Guest columnist Shane Brett discusses a new RR Donnelley survey on the MMIF challenges facing fund administrators.Read More

The authors want a new "Restricted UCITS" label created to ward off a possible arms race in which depositaries otherwise will attempt to satisfy their clients in a competitive way in an escalation that will end with them "offering guarantees for risks they cannot really control." Read More

The member states of the EU are expected to enact the pertinent legislation in July 2013. Then a London-based fund will be able to market in Italy by virtue of an intra-EU “passport,” although a hedge fund firm in New York or Hong Kong won’t be able to get such a passport for some time to come. The outsiders will have to work country-by-country, and this may well put them at a serious competitive disadvantage.Read More

After a survey of recipients of the UCITS Alternative Index, the UAI Industry Survey Q1 2012, Alix Capital reports that majorities expressed satisfaction with the current level of allocation for certain strategies: commodities, emerging markets, forex, and macro global strategies. But there was a lot of interest in increasing allocations to CTAs, equity market neutral, and volatility-based strategies. The strategy that receives the largest negative response (largest intended reduction in portfolio allocation) is fixed income. Read More

Since transaction costs and the illiquidity of certain portions of an index make ideal tracking impossible, there will be a difference between the return of a tracking ETF, such as those tracking ETFs that are structured as UCITS in Europe, and the return of the underlying index or benchmark. The European Securities and Markets Authority maintains that investors should be informed of the factors that are likely to affect the size and the volatility of this difference. Read More