GuernseyFinance And GIFA To Host Fund Masterclass

by Philip Morton, Investors Offshore.com

16 February 2007

London fund promoters and sponsors will have a chance to learn first-hand about the latest changes to Guernsey’s investment funds regime, it was announced this week.

GuernseyFinance and the Guernsey Investment Fund Association (GIFA) are to host a Guernsey Registered Funds Masterclass on the evening of March 7 to explain more about the new registered closed-ended funds framework.

A panel, including Ben Morgan, Partner at law firm Carey Olsen, Horace Camp, Managing Director of Kleinwort Benson (Channel Islands) Fund Services Limited and Nigel Farr, Partner, Herbert Smith, will discuss and then participate in a question and answer session on the streamlined consent process for registered closed-ended funds and the new rules on Principal Managers, which were both introduced at the beginning of the month.

“These regulatory changes mean that conducting funds business in Guernsey (is) simpler and quicker,” announced Mike de Haaff, Chairman of GIFA.

He continued:

“This masterclass is a great opportunity to reinforce that message face-to-face with fund promoters and sponsors in London, which is our major source of business introductions, and thereby ensure that the opportunities these changes present to secure much greater business flows into the island come to fruition.”

The changes regarding registered closed-ended funds and the new rules on Principal Managers are the first in a series that will be made to the investment funds regime during the year. They emanate from a root and branch review of the industry’s legal and regulatory framework by a working party – chaired by leading Guernsey advocate Peter Harwood – and the recommendations of its subsequent report.

Central to the Harwood Report, as it was christened, was the categorisation of funds into ‘regulated’ and ‘registered’ funds. It proposed that for ‘registered funds’ the focus of regulation should be on the licensed Guernsey administrator, reducing the number and scope of funds that will be regulated directly.

It also recommended that changes be made to facilitate Guernsey service providers to administer non-Guernsey funds.

The Guernsey Registered Funds Masterclass is the first in a series of events that will be held during the year to explain to fund promoters and sponsors more about the Guernsey investment funds industry, the changes coming on-stream and the advantages the island offers for conducting funds business.

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