HM Treasury has published its response to its first consultation on the transposition of the Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive (“AIFMD”) in the United Kingdom. The main thrust of the AIFMD will not hit Europe for a few years, but in the meantime there will be more uniform limitations on private placements in the European Union starting on July 22, 2013. Unfortunately, all of the EU countries are scrambling to get the new regulatory regimes in place. “Scrambling” may imply more activity than is really happening.
The United Kingdom has moved a step closer and published revised draft regulations under the AIFMD (.pdf). The good news is that the UK is proposing to provide a year of transition so that the requirements under the AIFMD for private placements won’t come into full effect until July 2014.
The draft regulations propose replacing the registration process for non-EU managers seeking to market their funds under the U.K. private placement regime with a simple notification procedure. You certify your compliance with the AIFMD. That way the fund manager does not have to wait for the approval of the Financial Conduct Authority before undertaking marketing.
That registration requirement is trouble under the AIFMD. Effectively, you need to go through the registration process and wait for approval before marketing in that EU country. There is no private placement passport. Of course, it may turn out that you end up with no investors in that country.
Now we need the other member countries of the EU to move forward so that European investors don’t get excluded from investment opportunities when the end of July comes around.
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Hi Doug. You’ve done a great job of untangling some of the confusion surrounding AIFMD. Great blog post.
Best wishes, Alex