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Bailey McCann, Opalesque New York:

Much of the reporting on UCITS tends to focus on performance drag, high fees, and high costs to bring a UCITS product to market. Despite this, delegates at the recent Opalesque Zurich Roundtable say that UCITS represent one of their fastest growing market - with demand exceeding current capacity in some cases.

"We continue to see strong interest for alternative UCITS, which has been our fastest growing product segment over the last two years. This reflects on one side the shift in demand from offshore to onshore funds – both private and institutional investors increasingly see UCITS as their preferred way to access sophisticated alternative strategies, because of the liquidity, higher level of investor protection and transparency offered by this fund format," explains Daniel Durrer, Head of Institutional & Fund Distribution (Continental Europe), GAM. GAM is a London-based investment firm with approximately $123.2bn in assets under management.

Much like the transition hedge funds are making into '40 Act structures here in the US, delegates note that shifting into the UCITS wrapper requires careful evaluation of a strategy to ensure integrity and performance. Strategies that capture a liquidity premia for example, are ill-suited for the UCITS structure. The same could be said for certain types of credit strategies at the '40 act structures i......................

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