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SYZ & CO has has launched OYSTER Multi-Manager Tail & Trading, a new sub-fund of its Luxembourg Part II SICAV 3A Alternative Funds.
Devised by SYZ Asset Management, this innovative new fund combines two complementary alternative strategies in order to provide investors with protection in the current environment, which is generally unfavourable to traditional asset classes. It thus combines decorrelated CTA funds with funds that pursue a strategy of active protection against extreme risks (“tail risk”). Thanks to its low correlation with the financial markets and other alternative strategies, this new fund aims to provide a significant improvement in the
By Michael Sanders – When Alceda Fund Management was established in 2007, Luxembourg was already a well-recognised fund domicile, so the choice was relatively straightforward. Now, with more than 3,800 investment funds and net assets of nearly EUR2.1bn, Luxembourg is Europe’s largest centre for investment funds and the second biggest fund domicile in the world, after the US, in terms of assets under management.
In our view, the development of the Ucits framework and, more importantly, the recent introduction of Ucits IV, which came into effect on July 1, will only serve to enhance Luxembourg’s leading position.
It’s not just
By Simon Gray – For nearly a decade Jersey has been focusing its strategy for developing the financial services industry on fund domiciliation and servicing for alternative investments including property funds, private equity structures and hedge fund platforms. However, the island’s concentration of fund expertise, structuring capability and robust but flexible regulation is also increasingly attracting managers interested in relocating all or part of their business, and often themselves.
Jersey has targeted hedge fund managers in particular (although this approach has also had a successful take-up with real estate and private equity managers) because their particularly light footprint in terms
By Simon Gray – Never has there been so much discussion in the industry about the redomiciliation of funds from offshore to onshore financial centres, especially within the European Union, in order to meet the preferences of institutional investors cagy about jurisdictions and structures perceived to be scantily regulated, to widen their potential investor base, to position them for the impact of future regulation, or a combination of the three.
As with many aspects of the alternative investment industry, information on the subject is more anecdotal than rigorously statistical. However, a series of surveys seems to point to a broad
By Simon Gray – At a time when an uncertain economic environment and financial climate is forcing existing investment fund managers to rethink their tried and tested models, and newcomers to the industry are struggling to gain traction amid rising regulatory constraints and costs as well as greater investor reticence, the emergence of the Mediterranean island nation of Malta as a player within Europe’s established fund centres is providing the industry with an attractive alternative at a vital time.
With a cost base significantly lower than in Luxembourg and Dublin, which up to now have been the continent’s main centres
By Peter Niven – No matter whether fund managers are considering relocating personally and/or corporately, there are few better options than Guernsey. The island’s coastline of cliffs, beaches and harbour ports combines with its French influence to provide a relaxed lifestyle in a temperate climate, in an environment where there is also a thriving international finance centre, including a leading investment fund industry.
Personal benefits
Lifestyle. Guernsey combines many of the reassuring elements of UK culture with the benefits of living abroad. For example, the island is English-speaking, uses the pound sterling and is in the same time zone as
By Simon Gray – A perfect storm of factors over the past four years has upended many of the traditional assumptions of asset managers, particularly those active in the alternative investment field, about how their business should be organised. The relative merits of different fund domiciles is a long-standing area of debate, but the past couple of years have seen management firms increasingly raise questions about where they should themselves be based.
The debate has been sharpened by a number of intertwined factors stemming from the global financial crisis and economic downturn. On one hand the crisis, together with the
The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has obtained a federal consent order for permanent injunction against CFTC defendant Jeffrey L Groendyke (doing business as JG Forex Fund) of Middleville, Michigan, requiring him to pay USD963,141 in restitution and a USD420,000 civil monetary penalty. The order also permanently bars Groendyke from engaging in any commodity-related activity, including trading and registering with the CFTC.
The order settles a CFTC anti-fraud enforcement action filed in May 2011, charging Groendyke with fraud and misappropriation in connection with a Ponzi scheme involving off-exchange foreign currency trading (forex).
The order, entered by Judge Robert J Jonker of the
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has issued a Final Order regarding the effective date for swap regulation.
On 14 July, 2011, the CFTC granted temporary exemptive relief from certain provisions of the Commodity Exchange Act that otherwise would have taken effect on 16 July, 2011, the general effective date of title VII of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. On October 25, 2011, the CFTC proposed to extend the exemptive relief beyond the 31 December, 2011, expiration date.
Today’s Final Order addresses the comments received on the 25 October, 2011, Notice of Proposed Amendment, and extends the
The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged a longtime Bernie Madoff employee with falsifying books and records in order to hide Madoff’s fraudulent investment advisory operations from regulators.
The SEC alleges that Enrica Cotellessa-Pitz, who worked at Bernard L Madoff Investment Securities LLC (BMIS) for more than 30 years, assisted in falsifying BMIS’s internal accounting records in order to misclassify hundreds of millions of dollars of income purportedly generated by BMIS’s investment advisory operations. Cotellessa-Pitz also falsified financial statements filed with the SEC and other regulators as well as materials that were prepared to deceive SEC staff examiners, federal and
