A total of 31 new Reserved Alternative Investment Funds, known as Raifs, were created in Luxembourg in January, down from 75 new Raifs that were launched in December and up from 27 such funds that were created the same month a year earlier, according to data reported in the Luxembourg Business Register.
The data showed that the Luxembourg Raifs hold a global interest. QIC, the Queensland Investment Corporation owned by the Australian government, issued an infrastructure investment Raif together with Carne Global. Ocorian supported Singapore-based SilkRoad with a new real estate fund.
At the end of January, Luxembourg was home to a total of 1684 Raifs.
New York-based Stepstone top issuer
Stepstone Group, a Nasdaq-listed global private markets investment firm with some 127 billion dollars in assets under management and headquarters in New York City, was the main Luxembourg Raif issuer in January with a total of five funds, created through its European subsidiary for alternative investments.
Stepstone’s list of new funds includes the SSOF IV Overage SMA L, and two funds that also have an additional holdings fund attached, Stepstone Secondary Opportunities Fund V Europe and Stepstone Capital Partners V Europe.
M7 Logistics Fund
Four management companies issued two Raifs each during January: Langham Hall, Ocorian, Carne Global and Lombard Odier. Langham Hall established its M7 Central European Investment Logistics Fund, together with a M7 feeder fund.
Raifs can be used for a variety of investment strategies from real estate to private equity to debt to commodities. The funds are only available to “well-informed” or institutional investors, unlike widely used and popular UCITS funds that are structured for more liquid asset classes. Investors wishing to make a private investment through a Raif are required to commit at least 125.000 euro as a long term investment.
Queensland government
Carne Global, the world’s largest third-party fund management company and the biggest Raif issuer in Luxembourg, issued the Private Debt SMA (Generali) fund with Generali, a large Italian insurance and asset management company.
Carne also arranged the creation of a Raif called QIC Infrastructure Debt Platform. QIC is the Queensland Investment Corporation, an asset management company owned by the regional government in Brisbane, Australia.
Singapore’s SilkRoad
Asset services provider Ocorian last week announced that it had supported Singapore-based SilkRoad Property Partners with the first close of its “Core-plus” real estate fund, holding some 144 million dollars. The fund appears in the Luxembourg Business Register’s Raif list as the Silkroad Structural Core Partners fund.
A statement on the Ocorian website said the fund “targets pandemic resilient sectors such as logistics and industrial, multi-family and senior living, service and convenience retail, and high growth real estate (led by IT and life sciences), in Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan and at a later stage, China, for a long-term return target of 8-10% per annum, on 50% leverage.”
Last year was the biggest year ever for Raifs, data analysis by InvestmentOfficer Luxembourg has shown. A total of 417 such funds were created in 2021, up 39 percent from 364 a year earlier.
Luxembourg’s government enabled the creation of Raifs in 2016, enabled through EU regulation. Specialists have described the regime as flexible thanks to light establishment requirements and efficient corporate operating rules. Only the management company is supervised by CSSF, not the product itself.
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