Financial lawyer says moves not ‘significant’
(CNS): Following news of another fund moving from the Cayman Islands one of Appleby’s partners based in Switzerland has said that the recent re-domiciling in the industry is not necessarily all that much of a concern to the jurisdiction. Despite moves by SkyBridge Capital, Citigroup funds Marshall Wace’s funds, Zais Group and rumours of a lot more, Matthew Feargrieve from the Cayman law firm’s Zurich office said while there is a lot of “jurisdictional arbitrage going on” it’s not statistically significant.
He said that re-domiciliation is a very expensive and complicated procedure, and it is only the bigger managers that are likely to be able to absorb the cost.
“On the other side of the coin, and this is something you don’t really read about, we are seeing more inflows of single managers into Cayman,” Feargrieve told HFM Week.
Increased US economic activity and what Feargrieve calls a growing “boredom” with the AIFM carnival are all playing their part, but, essentially, while the regulatory hubbub will subside, onshore products will never provide the alpha managers and investors crave.
“And Cayman is still the default jurisdiction for that,” Feargrieve told the industry’ magazine’s website.
Meanwhile, as the uncertainty over how much Cayman will be effected by Europe’s AIFM continues, in Washington on Wednesday senate Democrats offered a scaled-back version of the planned tax on investment fund managers. Reuters reports that the new investment fund managers’ tax, aims to tax 75 percent of investment fund managers income at ordinary tax rates, with an exception for assets held at least 5 years, of which only 50 percent would be taxed at ordinary income rates, according to committee documents. Senate rejected a larger, costlier bill.
Category: Business
Mr. Feargrieve (what a name!!) is whistling past the graveyard. He’s lucky to be in Switzerland where the gnomes neither fear nor grieve about what the politicians in the EU or US think.