Tom Pinnell, Chair of the AREF FutureGen Committee kicked off the event with a brief introduction outlining the purpose of the FutureGen Fund Life Cycle Series as a ‘back to basics’ course aimed at the member’s FutureGen staff. The audience were asked in a live poll ‘have you been involved in fund structuring?’ and out of 36 voters we had a 50/50 split of those who had and those who had not.
Alex Moss then took over to give a brief overview of Bayes Business School and its purpose, for more information on this you can sign up using the link at the bottom of this page.
We heard from speakers Andrew Boyce, Carey Olsen; Darren Stolzenberg, CMS UK and Patrick Groves, CMS UK on Fund Structures.
The audience were asked in a live poll ‘what do you need to think about when planning/structuring a fund?’ There was a mix of results including risk, jurisdiction, exit strategy, fees, return on investment, debt, tax, assets to buy and regulation.
In the main presentation Andrew covered the overall planning considerations when setting up a fund, looking specifically at different factors to consider when setting up a new vehicle. This included structuring considerations, for example target investors/markets, corporate governance, set up and ongoing costs, liquidity requirements and levels of regulation in the country of domicile. Andrew also noted some interesting points on the labour spent on nurturing a good reputation and how quick a good reputation can be lost.
Patrick presented a couple of the different types of vehicles and benefits of different jurisdictions. While looking at types of vehicles, Patrick compared some of the differing attributes of funds which are onshore vs offshore, open vs closed-ended, regulated or not and listed or not.
Darren took the audience through some of the regulatory issues in marketing a fund including AIFMD and passporting.
Andrew and Darren also touched on some of the future developments for fund structures including uncertainty surrounding the passporting regime in a post-Brexit industry, and the increase in fund managers domiciling their funds in Luxembourg as a response to this uncertainty.
The session was brought to a close with a couple of questions from the audience on the impact of the upcoming changes to Capital Gains Tax legislation on fund structures and the effect Brexit will have on AIFMD and the UK.
AREF would like to thank Carey Olsen for sponsoring the series; the speakers for providing their expert insight; and Alex Moss offering Bayes Business School as an excellent host. Lastly, thank you to all the delegates from AREF member firms and investors for making it such a success.
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