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ALPS has launched the ALPS Interval Fund Platform, a structure built to support retail closed-end funds and interval funds.
The ALPS platform, which combines ALPS’ experience in servicing closed-end funds with DST’s shareholder record-keeping and distribution capabilities in the alternative space, was designed to provide a turnkey solution for alternative investment managers looking to launch '40-Act registered interval funds and other continuously offered closed-end funds.
In addition to a cost-effective suite of services provided by ALPS Fund Services and ALPS Distributors, funds launched on the ALPS Interval Trust Platform have access to services from leading law firms and auditors. The
Total hedge fund assets increased 0.22% in the first month of 2015 bringing the industry’s total asset under management to USD3.033 trillion based on asset inflows and performance gains.
That’s according to eVesment’s latest January 2015 Hedge Fund Asset Flows Report which reveals that investors added USD1.19 billion in net new money into hedge funds during the month.
Multi-strategy hedge funds continued their trend of being a primary driver of new assets coming into the hedge fund industry. The universe received USD5.0 billion in new assets in January, their best start to a year since before the global financial crisis.
Hedge funds were up slightly in January with a gain of 0.03% overall, according to the Barclay Hedge Fund Index compiled by BarclayHedge.
“Central banks took centre stage in January’s financial turmoil as the Swiss National Bank unexpectedly abandoned its currency peg to the euro and the European Central Bank surprised investors when it announced monthly QE asset purchases that exceeded expectations,” says Sol Waksman, founder and president of BarclayHedge. “Equity markets in the US sold off, while European and Asian markets rallied.”
Hedge fund performance was mixed in January, with 12 of Barclay’s hedge fund indices making gains, while
The newly released 2015 Preqin Global Infrastructure Report features exclusive fund manager survey results, made available this week via a special complimentary report. The report provides insight into the future investment activity of infrastructure fund managers and their views on the current market.
Infrastructure fund managers appear to be bullish regarding the amount of capital they intend to commit to the asset class in the next 12 months, with 65% of managers surveyed by Preqin planning to deploy more capital in the asset class in 2015 than they did in 2014, and a considerable 27% planning to invest significantly
Hedge fund managers have two options when looking to bring a regulated fund product to Europe. The first is to go the UCITS route, the second is to establish an AIF, under the much more recent AIFM Directive, which is a far less trodden path than the UCITS regime.
ML Capital has two platforms to offer a complete regulated fund solution. The Dublin-domiciled MontLake UCITS platform has been operating since October 2010 while the MontLake QIAIF platform was established last December.
“It really is the strategy that is driving managers down one route or the other. If the strategy is
Luxembourg-based Fuchs Asset Management is not your typical AIFM provider. Its heritage is firmly rooted in wealth management. Having now grown into a team exceeding 100 people, it took the decision to diversify its offering and set up an AIFMD-compliant management company, receiving its license from the CSSF last June.
“With the substance needed to run an AIF today, a lot of mid-sized managers are now thinking: are we going to take on the burden of running our own AIFM, or are we going to use a third party?
“We now have the size and scale to consider such an
“I was in Chicago recently. A German pension fund said they had a USD500m allocation in a Chicago-based fund. They wanted to know that they could continue having a relationship with the manager and they said that having the depositary guarantee (under AIFMD) was important to their end investors. They told the manager that they wanted to put their USD500m allocation into an EU-regulated fund.
“We now have four funds on our AIFM platform that have come as a result of that market sentiment among investors,” confirms Derek Delaney (pictured) of DMS Offshore Group.
Although still early days, the point
The AIFM Directive may not be universally welcome but with greater focus being applied to compliance and operational risk oversight within the fund management industry, it is at least ensuring a new breed of higher quality fund manager; which for investors is good news.
“On the one hand AIFMD raises the threshold for new managers, but on the other hand once you’re AIFMD-compliant it makes things much easier from a capital raising perspective. The reason we exist is to help managers overcome that threshold and make the transition from a pre-AIFMD local framework to a pan-European standard,” comments Gerhard Grueter
Cordium, one of the industry’s leading regulatory and compliance firms, has devised a new offering for the European market to help managers overcome the marketing challenges of AIFMD.
Entitled the Cordium Total AIFM Solution (CTAS), the objective is to establish a fully functioning AIFM in Malta on behalf of the managers to support their plans to launch AIFMD-compliant funds.
Managers currently have two choices under the directive: to either operate their own AIFM and take on the management company responsibility, or to use a hosted AIFM solution. Where CTAS differs is that the manager retains full ownership of
Last May, MS Management Services SA, a Luxembourg-based subsidiary of the Maitland group, received authorisation from the CSSF to act as a third-party AIFM to alternative investment funds. At the same time, it established its own umbrella fund platform, MS SICAV SIF, to support managers wishing to fast track the process of launching an AIFMD-compliant fund in Europe.
Although less than a year in operation, there are already plans to extend the AIFM license capabilities to support private equity and real estate managers, in addition to hedge funds.
“We already provide administration services for PERE funds. Also, we have the
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