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Ask any AIFM what the key regulatory challenge is under AIFMD and the response is unanimous: Annex IV reporting.
The first deadline, 31 January 2015, has passed. But there are still many points to clarify on a substantial transparency report; one that any manager, EU or non-EU, must file regardless of whether they are using the AIFMD passport or merely privately placing their offshore fund in one or two markets.
“EU-based AIFMs left it to the very last minute to begin the process and there was a mad scramble to gather a range of disparate data from all their service
Alternative fund managers wishing to continue to market their funds into Europe have to navigate unchartered territory. The AIFMD only really kicked in last July at the end of the grandfathering period, since when both EU and non-EU AIFMs have started to treat the directive more seriously.
This is a complex piece of regulation and, in a similar fashion to the UCITS framework, managers have multiple options available to them. This report considers one option in particular – appointing a third party AIFM (or Management Company), and the fund distribution benefits that this can bring; be it for new funds
Natixis has entered exclusive negotiations to acquire DNCA. If the deal is completed, DNCA would would join Natixis Global Asset Management’s global lineup of independent investment management affiliates.
DNCA’s management team would remain a shareholder alongside Natixis Global Asset Management and would benefit from a progressive withdrawal mechanism beginning in 2016 that would align medium-term interests and gradually increase Natixis Global Asset Management’s stake in DNCA to 100%.
This projected acquisition was presented to Natixis Global Asset Management’s representative bodies on Wednesday, 18 February.
The addition of DNCA to Natixis Global Asset Management’s global lineup of affiliates would
Independent fund administrator Apex Fund Services has appointed Dennis Westley as Managing Director, North America with immediate effect.
By leveraging Apex's ability to bring global fund structures to the US, Westley will have responsibility for growing Apex's North American operations and integrating potential acquisitions. Reporting directly to Apex's Global CEO, Bill Salus, Westley will also manage Apex's offices in New York, New Jersey, Florida and Toronto.
Westley has over 30 years experience in the investment and financial services industry. He was previously a managing director in BNY Mellon's Alternative Investment Services group where he was Head of North American Client
Venovate and Capital Hedge have formed a partnership to offer better, faster, and broader access to alternative investments for family offices and mid-sized institutions.
Capital Hedge's FINTRX Investor Platform is a leading family office intelligence tool and asset-raising CRM solution for the alternative investment industry. Venovate Marketplace is the online brokerage platform for finding, researching, and investing in private placements. Together, the firms remove the hurdles many mid-sized institutions and family offices face when seeking institutional-quality alternative investments such as venture capital, private equity, real estate, and private companies.
"Many mid-sized institutions and family offices have difficulty sourcing quality investments
Elsen is using NVIDIA technology to bring massive gains in speed and efficiency to the financial calculations run by hedge funds and other financial institutions.
The NVIDIA Tesla Accelerated Computing Platform, which includes GPUs and enabling software, is the leading platform for accelerating data analytics and scientific computing. Complex time-series calculations – like Monte Carlo simulations and other algorithms widely run in financial services for backtesting, pricing and risk management – are ideally suited for GPU acceleration because they can be run in parallel. With their thousands of high-performance processing cores, GPU accelerators excel at parallel calculations.
The Elsen Accelerated
Hedge funds have started 2015 in the black, but only just, according to Preqin’s January 2015 Hedge Fund Performance Benchmarks.
The Preqin All-Strategies Hedge Fund benchmark gained only 0.07% in January, following a challenging year for hedge fund performance.
Still riding the wave of solid returns through 2014 are CTAs, posting 3.10% in January and delivering a 12-month rolling return of 14.72% in the year to January 2015. UCITS also had a good start to the year, posting their highest monthly returns (+1.21%) since October 2013.
CTAs posted their highest monthly return (+3.10%) in January since April 2011. Funds of
STOXX Limited has expanded its smart beta offering with the release of a new index family that selects components based on their Sharpe ratios.
The STOXX Sharpe Ratio indices include stocks from the respective benchmarks that have the highest Sharpe ratios, while excluding those with low dividend yields and low liquidity. JP Morgan has licensed the STOXX Europe Sharpe Ratio 50 Index for a structured product.
“Sharpe ratio takes into account both risk and return, and this index family offers an effective and transparent tool to target those companies that offer some of the most attractive risk-adjusted returns,” says Hartmut
Multi-asset class investment manager PineBridge Investments has appointed Anik Sen as Global Head of Equities, effective immediately.
Sen is responsible for managing the firm's global equities business with USD21.2 billion in assets under management as of 31 December, 2014. He is based in New York and reports to PineBridge's Chief Executive Officer, David Jiang.
"I am pleased that Anik will lead PineBridge's global equities business," says David Jiang. "Anik has a successful history of delivering alpha-focused solutions for our clients and a clear vision for further advancing our equities investment management business."
PineBridge Equities is differentiated through the use of
In an extract from the recently released 2015 Preqin Global Private Equity & Venture Capital Report, we analyze the results of Preqin’s latest survey of private equity and venture capital fund managers in order to gauge their concerns, views and plans for the year ahead.
Key Issues
Fundraising, valuations, performance, exits, and ongoing volatility and uncertainty in global markets were all highlighted by significant proportions of respondents as some of the biggest challenges facing the private equity and venture capital industry in the year ahead. However, significant variation exists between firms with differing strategies. Surveyed buyout firms felt that
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