Asset Servicing

A comprehensive review by the European Commission has the potential to put the European long-term investment funds (Eltif) regime back on track and set it up for the kind of success Ucits funds have experienced. Eltifs can become competitive with AIFs by removing many factors that made Eltif take-up much lower than had initially been hoped. The investment community has been broadly supportive of the reset.

For a second time in two years, investment fund managers have been ordered to directly report significant redemptions as the CSSF, the Grand Duchy’s financial supervisor, stepped up its monitoring of the impact from the war in Ukraine and the international sanctions against Russia.

The financial industry often baulked at the tens of billions of euros it pays for EU’s comprehensive regulation framework put in place post 2008 financial crisis. With markets in turmoil over Russia-Ukraine, that tone now is different.

Starlight Capital, a China-based venture capital group founded in 2021, has picked Apex Group to provide it with fund administration and corporate services, the companies announced on Monday.

Apex, active in the Luxembourg fund services ecosystem also with FundRock and LRI Invest, said it will service Starlight’s latest funds and provide it with its eFront software solution that will enhance efficiency and reporting transparency through a robust and scalable platform.

Luxembourg has a promising potential to further build on its global hub status for investment funds by encouraging management companies to expand their businesses into international fund distribution, according to Xavier Parain, CEO of FundRock, Luxembourg’s largest third-party manager of investment funds.

Two of Luxembourg’s biggest asset services companies, Apex and Universal-Investment, have recently strengthened their client services teams.

Apex Group said on Monday it has been appointed by the NEOR Crypto Volatility Fund Ltd to provide it with administration and transfer agency services. The fund, registered with the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority, will be managed by Switzerland-based Eagle Eye Finance Sàrl, supervised by Swiss financial regulator FINMA.

FundRock, a unit of Apex Group, said on Tuesday that it will serve as in-house manager of the Premium Maritime Credit Fund, a new Luxembourg-based fund that first closed in January after raising 110 million dollars from European institutions and family offices.

Universal-Investment, the third-largest management company in Luxembourg, said on Tuesday that it has been appointed as the management company for the Luxembourg fund portfolio of Switzerland’s Fisch Asset Management. Increasing costs and regulatory requirements are mentioned as reasons for the transfer.

An alternative investment vehicle that relatively swiftly established itself in Luxembourg continued to become more popular last year, an analysis of data filed with the country’s business register shows. If growth continues at the current pace, Luxembourg will be home to more than 2,000 such funds, known as Raifs, by the end of this year.