AIFMD and Poultry Ian Hamilton

This column is authored by Ian Hamilton, who is the founder of IDS Group. IDS provides fund administration services in Africa and Europe through Malta. He is also the founder of Scotstone Investments, a company that has fund structures and services for global emerging new managers.

Talking to a number of smaller fund managers across Europe and the UK, I may be unkind with my poultry comparisons, but many of them are running around like headless chickens, or worse, burying their heads in the sand like ostriches.

Burying one's head in the sand in the months ahead is going to result in one's rump being exposed and AIFMD coming in with a kick where you do not want to be kicked. Regulators are rubbing their hands in glee and cannot wait to bring the axe down on fund managers who have not complied with the requirements. Also, Institutional investors and asset allocators are going to exit from funds not compliant. They are already asking questions about how AIFMD compliant is the fund.

So what are the options?

Getting an asset manager's house in order to meet the AIFMD requirements is difficult and costly. Smaller investment houses simply cannot afford the costs of extra staff to meet reporting requirements. Quite a bit can be outsourced to the host of new service providers that are springing up offering a variety of outsource services. However, many new service providers are untried, untested and may also not know what is required so this can be a costly exercise if the right service providers are not engaged in the first place.

Another alternative is for smaller companies to merge with other companies who ar......................

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This article was published in Opalesque's New Managers a top-down monthly analysis, news and research publication on the global emerging manager space.