The Guernsey Financial Services Commission has signed deals with 27 European regulators to allow Guernsey-based alternative fund managers to continue receiving investments from
Europe after July 22 – the deadline for transposing the Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive (AIFMD) into European law.
As a non-European Union jurisdiction, Guernsey is not required to implement the AIFMD. However, alternative fund managers based in Guernsey would not be allowed to receive investments from the EU without cooperating with some requirements of the directive.
“This ensures that, subject to the completion of procedures with national security supervisors, Guernsey-based managers will continue to have access to the EU market through the existing NPP [national private placement] regimes for the immediate future,” says Fiona Le Poidevin, chief executive of Guernsey Finance, which promotes the island’s financial industry.
Guernsey has NPP regimes with numerous European countries that allow fund managers on the island to receive investments from appropriately qualified investors in those countries.
The next step for Guernsey will be to establish its own AIFMD-equivalent regime. Guernsey-based fund managers that fall under this regime will be able to market their products in Europe. However, a spokesman for Guernsey Finance says he expects many fund managers to continue to use the NPP route because it is more familiar and less demanding than the AIFMD-equivalent is expected to be.
Guernsey-based alternative fund managers will be able to use the NPP option to sell their funds into the EU until at least 2015, after which they will have to adopt the AIFMD-equivalent legislation if they want to continue to serve EU clients.
The 27 new deals include agreements with the securities regulators of the UK, France and Germany.
©2013 funds europe
